


Today's Another Day To Find You

by jezziejay, nuuclears



Category: Men's Hockey RPF
Genre: Fluff and Angst, M/M, Post-Divorce, Romantic Comedy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-02
Updated: 2019-01-02
Packaged: 2019-10-02 12:13:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 24,854
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17264015
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jezziejay/pseuds/jezziejay, https://archiveofourown.org/users/nuuclears/pseuds/nuuclears
Summary: Patrick tries to find Jonny a new boyfriend so he can stop paying alimony.Sort of.





	Today's Another Day To Find You

**Author's Note:**

  * For [CoffeeKristin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/CoffeeKristin/gifts).



> Story by me, and art by the amazingly talented nuuclears, who has been a joy to work with. <3
> 
>  
> 
> Huge thanks to [allthebros](https://archiveofourown.org/users/allthebros) for talking me through this in the beginning, for being so supportive, and for your extraordinary patience. You make a huge difference to my work. <3
> 
>  
> 
> Also, big thanks to the mods of the fest, who have been so helpful and kind, and really made this a fun thing to be part of. <3
> 
>  
> 
> Title from a-ha's song, Take On Me.

 

**Now**

 

Patrick’s not going to lie here -- he’s fucking borderline offended. “There’s nothing wrong with him,” he says, pushing the phone closer to Darrin. Maybe the guy needs glasses. “I only took that photo yesterday. You can clearly see he’s hot.”

Darrin makes a strangled sort of noise, looking away from Patrick’s phone and around the coffee shop, as if hoping someone will save him.

“Well?”

“I guess?” 

That’s all Patrick really needs to hear. “Okay, I’ll get something set up between you two --”

“No,” Darrin cuts in. “I mean, I guess he’s hot, and that’s it, man. Seriously, I just came in here for my lunch. I mean, where did you say we met? Neil’s bachelor party? Did we even have a conversation then? That was when, what, January of last year? And then five minutes ago, you walk in here, barely make small talk, and now you’re trying to set me up with your ex-husband. It’s just weird, okay?”

Maybe Patrick could have moved in for the hard sell a little more gently, but he’s committed now, so. “Not really. Jonny and I are cool. I’m with someone else now. He’s single. You’re single --”

“That’s not the weird part… hey, how do you even know that I’m single?”

“I don’t? I mean, if you’re dating someone, that’s cool, but if you’re not, I happen to know a great guy that likes the same stuff as you do, you know, sport, wakeboarding, skiing, all that shit. You could be perfect for each other.” Patrick means to sound reassuring, but the look of horror on Darrin’s face suggests that it’s maybe not going so well. 

“How do you know that?”

“Okay, fine, that’s a pretty big statement. Of course I don’t know that you’re perfect for each other, but --”

“No,” Darrin says slowly. “How do you know that I like wakeboarding? Or sport?”

“Can I get you guys anything?” The server appears with perfect timing, flipping over her notepad, and staring at it in lieu of making eye contact.

“Yes,” Patrick says quickly before Darrin can make her leave, or make Patrick leave, or even leave himself. He reads the first line of the menu. “What’s your shake of the day?”

“Strawberry and kiwi.”

Patrick hates strawberries. “I hate strawberries.”

“You don’t have to have strawberries,” the server says, as if speaking to a small child. “We have other flavors. They’re right there on the menu.”

“Yeah, but do you wash the jug, or do you just rinse it, because --” 

She looks at him for the first time. “I’ll have a coffee,” Patrick decides, and her face says that that’s a very good idea.

“And for you, doll? The usual?”

Patrick’s not shocked that it takes Darrin several minutes to explain his usual to someone who already knows his order, but it gives him the time he needs to get creative. “I met Neil a few weeks ago,” he says when the server sashays back to the kitchen. “We got to talking about his bachelor party, and he caught me up with everything and everyone.”

Darrin’s face relaxes a little. “Oh. So, I guess he told you about the whole…” He waves his hand around, like it’s finishing the story.

“Yeah,” Patrick says, his eyes widening to mirror Darrin’s. “That was a total…” He blows a long breath out the corner of his mouth. “Right?”

Darrin nods. “I mean, it was bad enough when we thought it was just six of them. But eight? _Eight_?”

“I wish I knew,” Patrick says, shaking his head in bewilderment. “When I heard eight, I just thought… what the fuck, eight? You know?”

“Yeah.”

Patrick lets that rest for a minute. “So, back to Jonny. I don’t know if I mentioned that he’s super smart. He’s on an accelerated program, finishing his Master’s degree next April. I mean, we’re talking the full fucking package here, Darrin. Body, face, brains.”

An ass you could fall asleep on.

An ass Patrick has fallen asleep on.

“He’s a catch,” Patrick finishes, with utter sincerity. 

“Begs the question,” Darrin says, arching a perfectly sculpted brow. “Why did you throw him back?”

 

**Before**

 

Patrick didn’t know what to say, and even if he did, even if he had the right words, he couldn’t use them. Not without their parents hearing. If it had been just the two of them, he might have said, ‘it was worth it’ and ‘I’ll never be sorry’, or something equally romcom worthy. He’d have told Jonny that they’d lie low for a while, and look for each other later on. Finished that with a passionate kiss and a line or two from Daniel Day Lewis. _I will find you, no matter how long it takes, no matter how far. I will find you!_

But it wasn’t the two of them, it was the the six of them standing awkwardly near each other in the casino’s huge lobby. And the thing was, Patrick _was_ sorry. He was sick with it every time he looked at his mother’s red-rimmed eyes, or Andrée’s clenched jaw, or his dad’s bewildered expression. And worst of all, every time he looked at Jonny and the new bracelet that hung loose on his wrist.

They were all too hot, too illuminated under the chandeliers that seemed full of magic and wonder just a few short months ago, but were now crass and garish, shining miserable spotlights on every dumb thing that Patrick and Jonny had done since they met each other.

A couple of weeks ago, they were masters of their own destinies, men of the world, needing no one but each other. They were _husbands_.

Here, in front of their parents, they were children again, embarrassed and scared, wiping at the slate grey tarnish on their ring fingers. It hadn’t taken long for the gold plate to wear away.

“Jonathan,” Andrée said, and Jonny nodded. 

“Sorry,” he said to Patrick, and he meant it. It was all over his face, etched in every crease and every pore.

“It was my fault,” Patrick whispered. 

“Okay.” Tiki clapped his hands loudly. “Let’s go, Romeo and Juliet.” It was a joke, a silly thing to say, but all it did was make the tension even denser. Andrée moved closer, edging between Patrick and her son. 

“Jonathan,” she said again, curt and clipped.

“Bye, Patrick,” Jonny said, and he was taken from the room.

 

**Yesterday**

 

Lana scans the paperwork, her mouth moving silently. “I don’t understand,” she says from her perch on the counter. She’s still in her scrubs, wafting a smell of antiseptic that makes Patrick’s nose itch. “I’m just off a sixteen hour shift, so maybe I’m missing something.” She looks up, shrugging. “What am I missing?”

Patrick takes the pen from his mouth to speak. “The part where they said no?”

“No, I’ve seen that. That’s the part I don’t understand. You applied for a loan to buy one new zamboni, one decent second-hand zamboni, plus enough to upgrade the van to a decent transport carrier, minus the forty grand deposit you already have. But they’re only willing to lend you seventy percent of the balance?”

Her mental math skills are quite impressive. “That’s the summary.”

“That doesn’t make sense. You’ve built your business up from scratch, it’s been turning over a profit since the end of year one. You’ve no debts, no dependents -” She stops when Patrick makes a noise that might be a grunt, or a scoff. “What? _What_. Jesus, Pat. Do you have a secret child that you haven’t told me about. Secret _children_?”

Patrick pulls a face at her. “A not-so-secret ex-husband?”

“Who you married for five minutes when you were eighteen. What has that got to do with --” She looks back down at the pages in her hands, eyes narrowed shrewdly as they rove over the figures. “Wait. You have an ongoing direct debit for five hundred dollars a month. There’s no title on it.”

Patrick waits.

“Please tell me it’s additional savings.”

“It’s alimony.”

“You’re shitting me.” 

It gets quiet then, the scary kind of silent, the type that’s filled with eggshells. “Okay,” Lana says eventually, carefully. “I know that this is minefield, and I know how you are about commitment --”

“I’m fine with commitment,” Patrick snaps, hearing himself not sounding particularly fine. “I just prefer not to rush into things,” he says, gentler.

“Not to rush --” Lana drops her head like it’s heavy, and lifts it again with a deep breath. “You don’t like to talk about him, and that’s fine. It was a weird clusterfuck, whatever. But, I’m just going to say two things. One, this alimony is bullshit. If some judge ordered you to pay five hundred dollars a month to someone who is essentially a stranger, for an indefinite period, then you got royally screwed over.”

The first thing Patrick wants to do with that is to say that Jonny isn’t a stranger. He’d never felt like a stranger, even when he was. 

Lana’s sneakers squeak on the laminate floor as she crosses it. “Two,” she continues, leaning down to rest her chin on top of his head. “You need to think about this logically. If you weren’t paying this, this... extortion, then you’d be up six thousand a year, and therefore eligible for a higher borrowing percentage. You need to get in touch with this guy, this… I don’t even know his name --”

“Jonny.”

“Jonny. Explain the situation to him, or better still, just tell him you’re done supporting him. He might have been a kid when you married him, but he’s a grown ass adult now.”

Lana pushes closer to him, and Patrick can’t move. It isn’t the press of her body that leaves him still, but the weight of her words.

Get in touch with Jonny. 

Not once in the past five years was that even something that seemed like a possibility.

“Just think about it,” she says, lips brushing his temple. “And hey, I know I was just dropping by to see how things went with the bank, but do you think I could stay over? I can’t bear the thought of getting back into my car right now.”

Patrick reaches back to rub her shoulder sympathetically. “Sure.” 

“Thanks, hon.” She groans as she straightens, a yawn all but swallowing her whole face. “I’m going to sleep right through. I have the morning shift.”

“Goodnight,” he says, even though it isn’t even six pm.

“Goodnight.” Her gait is stiff as she walks to the door. “Oh,” she says suddenly, as if something just dawned on her. But Patrick sees her take a steadying breath. “If you’re looking to save some additional money, I could always move in here, you know?”

Patrick wonders if his face blanks as quickly as his mind.

“Just something else to think about,” she sing-songs, closing the door behind her and leaving Patrick to go back to thinking about the other thing she said.

Get in touch with Jonny.

*

Twenty minutes later, he shoots off a text to Erica, and ten minutes after that, his phone rings.

“Why do I need Mom’s cell?” 

Patrick moves as far from the door as possible. “Have you got it?” he says quietly.

“Yes, she’s out talking to Mrs. Klein in the garden. But again, why do I need it, and why are you whispering? Have you been kidnapped? I’ve about two bucks for the ransom pot.”

“Lana’s sleeping. I want you go through Mom’s contacts and see if you can find Jonny’s number.”

For a second, he thinks Erica may have hung up. “Jonny? As in, your ex-husband Jonny? As in, giving all your love to just one man? I thought we buried that tragedy. Six feet down, no resurrection. Or have you forgotten that period of very intense mourning?”

Fat chance. “I need to talk to him about some financial shit that we didn’t sort out when we got divorced.”

The silence is deafening. “Erica?”

“No.”

“Oh, come on. I just -- ”

“No, as in no, he’s not in Mom’s contacts. Not under J for Jonny, Jonathan, or Jon. Not under T for Toews. Or I for Idiot who married my son. He’s not here, Pat. I don’t know why you thought he would be.”

Patrick swallows down his disappointment. “I called home a few times from Jonny’s cell when we were in the hospital. Thought maybe Mom would have saved the number.” 

“There is an Andrée, under A, and I’m pretty sure that’s a Canadian cell number next to it.”

Just the mention of Jonny’s mother’s name makes Patrick go a bit weak-kneed with terror. He hears himself make a weird sort of noise that Erica laughs at, and then scribbles down the numbers that she calls out. “Okay, Mom’s coming up the driveway. Good luck with Andrée, and with Jonny. And, Pat?”

“What?”

“If you love him, be proud of him. After all, he’s just a --”

*

Andrée answers on the third ring, just as Patrick remembers something important. She isn’t Mrs. Toews. Or Ms. Toews. Or anything Toews. She’s -- fuck.

“Hello?... Hello?... Helloooo.”

The only time she had ever spoken to him directly was to correct his assumed _Mrs. Toews._ Something beginning with F?

“ _Hello_?” 

“Andrée,” Patrick says, and then shoves his fist into his mouth. 

“Yes?” she answers and asks at the same time. There’s a whish of static over the line, her voice fading in and out. “Who is this?” 

_Chelsea from the dental surgery. We’ve noticed that you’re coming up to your six month check up time, and perhaps you might like --_

“Who is --”

“ -- Patrick. Um, Patrick Kane. I don’t know if you remember me, but we met about five years ago in Nevada, when Jonathan was--” my husband “ -- ill. My family was there, too. My mom is Donna, and my dad --” 

“Patrick.” Andrée sounds surprised, but also a little amused. “I remember you. Quite well, as it happens. How are your parents? And your sisters?” 

“They’re good, thank you,” Patrick says. He knew Andrée was from Quebec, but she had said so little when she came to the hospital that he never picked up on how strong her accent was. It’s more pronounced now, softer without the steely edge and hiccuping sobs. “And your family?” 

“They are well, too, Patrick.” She doesn’t elaborate, and that feels intentional. 

“So,” Patrick says, taking a breath. He has a lie at the ready, all he has to do it deliver it. “I guess I’ll come to the point. I’m trying to get in touch with Jonny, with Jonathan. We had this buddy back in Vegas. Nice guy, Australian, he was a trainee chef. He’s getting married soon, uh, to a Swedish girl, I think. Anyway, he sent Jonathan’s invitation here, and I thought I might - oh, I’m not going, by the way, to the wedding. I have uh, work that day, so I won’t even be able to see Jonathan. Big job, can’t take the time off. I have to --”

It wasn’t supposed to go anything like that. It was supposed to go exactly like he had written on the piece of paper in front of him -- ‘I have some wedding invitations here from a mutual friend of ours, a guy we used to work with. I’d like forward Jonathan’s to him. Could I have his address, please?’

He’s gone rogue on himself, veered right off script, and now he has no idea what he’s going to do on this imaginary day. “ -- do prep for the electrics, and you know how those contractors are. Those guys don’t wait around --” 

“Patrick.” 

It is incredibly kind of her to step in and save him from himself. 

“... yes?”

“Do you have a pen?”

“A pen?”

“Yes, a pen, mon cher. To write down Jonathan’s address for this… this invitation.”

“Yes? I can hold the line if you need to go look for your book, or whatever.”

“Jonathan has been living in the same house for four years now. I know the address by memory.” She calls it out and makes Patrick read it back to her again. They exchange a few niceties, promises to pass on good wishes to family members, but Patrick isn’t really paying attention. He’s staring down at the words he’s just written, watching them swim in and out of focus.

The words which say that for the past four years he and Jonny have been living just over ten miles away from one another.

*

The house is impressive; a small enough front lawn covered with well tended to planters. The windows are big and dressed with wooden blinds. It’s nice, bright, and more upmarket than the place Patrick lives in.

That irritates him a little, and more or less makes up his mind. When he gets home, he’s going to write to the bank to cancel the standing order, effective immediately. He’s beginning to compose the email in his head when he turns around and walks right into Jonny.

Jonny steps back in shock, mouth dropping and eyes widening. He’s taller now, broader, but he still has the same dumb face, and every bit of annoyance rushes out of Patrick with a giddy exhale. 

“Hi,” he says, stuffing his hands into his pockets, and trying not to squirm under Jonny’s locked-and-loaded stare. 

Jonny’s head shakes, and it takes him a few more seconds to be able to gasp out a _Patrick_. His mouth flaps for a bit before settling on a beam so wide that Patrick is helpless to do anything but grin back.

“Jesus,” Jonny laughs, and Patrick is pulled into a hug that’s familiar and new. Jonny still smells like he always did, but his body is different, and Patrick has to stretch to get his arms all the way around Jonny’s shoulders. The little squeeze Jonny gives just before they pull apart reaches right into Patrick’s chest.

“Sorry,” Jonny says, laughing again, and dropping his hands back by his sides. “It’s just. Man, it’s so good to see you.”

It is, Patrick thinks. It really is. 

“Shit,” Jonny says, almost wistful. He shakes his head some more and then punches Patrick hard on the arm. “Fuck, what are you even doing here?”

“I wanted to see you,” Patrick says, which is pretty much the truth. “Your mom told me where you lived, and so.” 

“And so you came all the way from Buffalo just to see me?” 

“Rosemont, actually. I’ve been in Chicago for as long as you have.”

“You’re kidding. Fuck, you’re not. You’ve been here all this time?”

“Weird, huh?” Patrick jerks his head in the direction of Jonny’s house. “So, you gonna ask me in?”

For the first time, Jonny’s smile falters. He looks at the house and then back to Patrick. “Sure,” he says, voice tight, and a minute later, Patrick understands why. The inside of the house is nothing like advertised. It’s what his grandma would call _all fur coat and no panties_ , the outdoor elegance masking an interior of cracked floor tiles, peeling paint, and padlocked doors.

“Follow me,” Jonny says, not meeting Patrick’s eyes. He begins padding up the bare staircase, and Patrick climbs up behind him, holding onto the rickety banister. There are more bolted doors on the landing, and one that’s opened slightly. The bathroom, Patrick guesses.

“Nearly there,” Jonny huffs, leading them up another much narrower staircase and to a door in the eaves of an attic. He jiggles the key in the lock as if there’s a practised knack to opening it, and then stands by to let Patrick in.

“Sit down,” he says, and Patrick almosts says _where?_ There’s a single bed, a clothes rail, and a three drawer locker that’s also a shelf for a wash-bag, comb, shaving mirror, and phone charger. A few books and notebooks are piled up on the floor by a canvas book bag. 

“How many of you live here?”

“Nine, I think,” Jonny says, kicking a couple of pairs of sneakers under the bed. “There are five bedrooms, although it was originally leased as a three bed. Greg was renting it with his girlfriend and her friend, but the girls took off, his work hours got cut, so he just started taking in more and more tenants. He turned the living room into a bedroom, and we share the kitchen. Although half of that became another bedroom last year.”

“Is that legal?” The electrical socket that’s hanging on by a single screw certainly isn’t.

Jonny shrugs like he doesn’t much care. “It’s only for one more college year, and it’s cheap. Greg’s actually okay, he’s not making any money out of this. We split the rent equally. The landlord lives in Indiana, but she has relatives around here, so we keep the outside tidy in case they pass by.” 

Patrick looks around, greedy for any more clues about Jonny’s life. There are several pairs of navy pants on the clothes rail, some still in their dry-cleaning wrap, and some pale blue tunic tops, like the ones ward nurses wear. 

He has questions but before he can begin asking, Jonny jerks his head to the window. “There are some perks to occupying the penthouse suite,” he says with a smile. “Exclusive access to the rooftop terrace.”

They have to climb out the window and up the firescape to a small flat surface with views of the chimney and a small cluttered yard. There are also two seen-better-days deckchairs, which Jonny dusts off with a flourish before dragging a bucket of water out of the shade.

“What more could you want, eh?” he beams, tossing Patrick a bottle he’s dug out from the bucket. He’s doing that head shake again when he sits down, like he still can’t quite believe that Patrick is there, on his roof, drinking his beer. “Fuck,” he laughs. “It’s just so good to see you.”

“You, too. So, what’s going on? Catch me up with everything.”

It’s so easy to fall back into conversation, as if they’d never stopped talking, as if there was never any strain or awkwardness. Jonny likes his part-time job at a care facility for the elderly. It’s mostly lifting and helping with feeding, and being bossed around by nurses. But he likes the residents, and has developed a real appreciation for the Antiques Roadshow.

He’s studying for a dual degree in occupational therapy. He was thinking of physio, but well, the plans for York fell through, what with the whole, you know - he waves his hand and smiles sheepishly. 

_Epic fuck up we orchestrated._

“I stayed at home for the rest of that year, and got a job with Meals on Wheels, and that’s when I started thinking about OT instead of PT. And then I thought that maybe Toronto wasn’t the best fit because -” Another handwave. 

_I needed a bit of space from my parents, and I wanted to prove to them that I could be trusted._

Patrick’s always been good at filling in Jonny’s gaps.

“Anyway, I got a near enough a full ride with a hockey scholarship. The guy who coached my team when I was a kid is the assistant coach at Northwestern. And I like the course. This year’s my last, and I’ve already got a start on my fieldwork. I’m doing a rotation in Lurie.”

“The hockey not going anywhere?”

Jonny’s head shakes. “Not to the NHL, anyway. Or the AHL. Just don’t have the polish.”

Patrick knows it might have been different, had there been money for coaching and proper equipment when Jonny was younger. 

“But you know, four years of college hockey has been… hold on.” Jonny rolls onto one hip and pulls a phone from his back pocket, smiling at whatever’s on the lit up screen.

Patrick smiles, too, because he’s pretty sure that’s the same phone Jonny had five years ago.

“My mom,” Jonny says. “Warning me that I might be hearing from you soon. Some, and I quote, bullshit about a wedding invitation.” He laughs. “What did she say when you told her you were living in Chicago?”

“I didn’t. I thought I’d leave that to you.”

“Thanks,” Jonny drawls, dropping the phone onto his lap. “Maybe later.”

“How are they? Your parents. Are things still…”

Jonny’s _yeah_ is a drawn out sigh. “There was more shit, but they finally got to that asshole in the Caymans, and long story short, the investors were compensated. Dad didn’t get anything, but at least he could stop paying everybody else.”

“That’s good, right? Must take a lot of pressure off.”

“I dunno,” Jonny says, but there’s a playful quirk to his lips. “I think having money again has changed them. They’re getting a take-out every week, and there’s even talk of Dad taking Mom to a reasonably priced hotel for an overnight stay. It’s all going to their heads.”

Patrick catalogues the changes in Jonny’s face as he talks. His expressions are easier, like the botox-ish awkwardness has dissolved, and uncovered a more natural, lively affect. There are divots where once there were moles, and a scar on Jonny’s top lip that Patrick’s never met before.

“You look good,” Jonny says suddenly.

“I am,” Patrick says, and he takes both another beer and his turn to talk. He also stayed home for the year after the, _you know_. And yeah, he went back to working construction with his uncles. He came to Chicago for summer work on a building site, but he got a promotion and he didn’t marry anyone, so his parents were pleased and let him stay. 

Jonny snorts into his bottle.

“Thought about quantity surveying for a while. But I prefered site work and I was good at it. I was earning a foreman’s wage before I was twenty-one.”

“And is that what you’re doing now?”

“No, winters in this city are too brutal, and they weren’t telling any lies about the wind. I took a custodial job between two sports centers, and built up a little business from there. I now run my own buildings’ management company. We have four sports clubs on our books. I do the equipment and site maintenance mostly, but I also employ a couple of cleaners and part-time painters. I was thinking about expanding, but then I found another little niche I’m interested in - zamboni hire and rink maintenance.”

He could continue - _That’s really why I’m here, I need to pull the reins on the alimony pony. It’s not my fault at all, but the bank is being a real dick about lending percentages. So. Shrug emoji._

But Jonny is sitting on a shitty chair, scuffing his knock-off Birkenstocks on the ground. The beer in his hand is the kind that’s always on special, and the only jewelry he’s wearing is the four strand medical bracelet that now only has three strands. The others look like they might be on their last legs, and the once silver pendant is now a dull lead color. 

It’s easy to say something else in the face of all that. “Maybe one day you’ll see me on the TV, driving the zamboni for the Stanley Cup Finals.”

“Dream big or go home, eh?” Jonny teases. “Sounds like you’re well on the way to that first Hummer then.”

Patrick laughs. “You remember that, huh?”

“First thing you ever said to me. Although you were mostly talking to Kevin.”

“That asshole,” Patrick snorts. 

It gets quiet between them then, a relaxed silence that Jonny breaks by asking if Patrick’s seeing anybody.

“Yeah,” he answers, feeling like he probably should have mentioned it before now. “Lana, she’s an ER nurse at Northwestern Memorial.” He sloshes the dregs of his bottle, watching them swirl. “What about you?”

“Nah.”

“Why not?”

“Oh, I dunno,” Jonny says with a rueful smirk. “Uni, study, work, placement, hockey. I’d be a nightmare to date.”

“Bullshit, you’re a total catch. I’d know, I married you, remember?”

“Vaguely,” Jonny drawls, pulling a sarcastic face. “I just mean that I don’t have a lot of time. Although I am in the market for a rich, handsome, extremely patient man, if you know any.”

“It so happens that I do,” Patrick says, a little seed beginning to bloom in his head. “I know a guy who’s all of those things, and he’s single.” 

Jonny’s face blanks in horror. “Jesus, man, I was kidding --”

“Let me fix you up,” Patrick says, insistent, because, yes, he’s having the mother of epiphanies right now. “No big thing, he’d be happy with a beer and a bowl of wings. He really is a decent dude, and hey, do I not have excellent taste in men?”

Jonny starts to smile but stops before any teeth get involved. “Oh, did you and he --”

“Oh god, no. God _no_. Guy is like a brother to me. And, I didn’t date for a while after we… There was a girl at home, friend of Erica’s, but she wanted…” This is heading down a street that Patrick would prefer not to walk on. “I’m happy with Lana,” he says, taking a swift detour. “I’m really happy, and I’d love for you to have that, too.”

Jonny says nothing for a few long seconds. “You’re happy, huh?”

“Yeah, man.”

“I’m glad,” Jonny says, and Patrick knows he’s being utterly honest. “I’m really glad.”

“Great,” Patrick says, pulling out his phone and calling up the camera app. “Let me be glad for you, too. Say cheese!”

*

It’s a good photo, Patrick decides when he gets home. Jonny is a little startled, but his jaw is strong, and his eyes are bright, and Patrick had forgotten how much he liked looking at him.

He closes the image and logs into Facebook in search of someone else who would appreciate Jonny’s everything, but everyone on Patrick’s page is too married, too taken, too straight, too asshole, too odd, too -- 

_Darrin, suggested friend for you_. Patrick leans in, clicking to see what mutual friends they have. He’s definitely met this guy somewhere before, and yes, there’s the connection. A year or so ago, Neil, Lana’s cousin’s fiancé, was low on numbers for his bachelor party, so Patrick pity-attended. Darrin had been there, too.

Patrick clicks on the link and fistpumps victoriously as Darrin passes the checklist with honours. 

Gay, tick. Handsome, tick. Senior Accountant with Murry & Flynn, tick. Apartment on Lincoln, tick. Vacations in Aruba, tick. Looks good while wakeboarding, tick. Enjoys all sport, tick. Adventure seeker, tick. 

Relationship Status - Single. Tick, tick, tick.

Patrick googles the address for Darrin’s company, and then searches for the nearest coffee shop. He can’t be sure that Darrin lunches there, but Patrick can wait outside the building, and follow him if necessary. He’s mentally clearing his schedule for a couple of hours from noon when Lana pads into the room, squinting against the light.

“Forgot to bring in water,” she says, stumbling to the faucet. “You been sitting here all evening?” 

Honey, you won’t believe this, but in the four hours since you went to bed, I contacted my ex-mother-in-law, went to visit my ex-husband, but didn’t tell him that I wasn’t paying for his alimony because I feel bad about how poor he is. Still, don’t worry, I have an awesome plan to get him a rich boyfriend that I can offload my financial responsibilities onto. And yes, I know that you don’t think they’re my responsibilities, but you didn’t see how he is living. I don’t know what he’s spending the money on, but it’s not designer clothes and fine dining. Maybe he’s using it for college fees, or a gambling debt, or whatever. He needs it, and I’m going to keep paying it until he doesn’t.

“Yeah.”

Lana fills her glass and gives him a tired smile as she passes. “Don’t stay up too late,” she says.

“I won’t.”

He waits until he hears her shut the bedroom door before calling up the photograph again.

 

**Before**

 

Their first meeting was truly serendipitous because Patrick had been seconds away from quitting. 

“You know where it is,” Kevin said, holding out the keys like he was bored. 

Patrick snorted. “I’m not washing your car, man.”

“It’s a company vehicle and --”

“What the fuck ever. It’s not in my job description to --”

Someone nearby cleared his throat. Patrick and Kevin gave a cursory look before they went back to ignoring him.

“Yeah?” Kevin said. “You want to discuss your job description?” He ducked behind the new guy like the weasel he was. “Sure, let’s have a coffee. You can bring your contract and your union rep.”

Dick, Patrick thought and he was just about to say that outloud when the new guy said, “Are you Kevin? I was told to find Kevin. I’m Jonathan. I’m starting work here today.” 

Kevin rolled his eyes with all the sufferance in the world. “I’m going on my lunch,” he sighed, as if Jonathan should know that. “So, your first job is to supervise Kane here until I get back. He’s going to wash one of the company cars. Feel free to fire him if he doesn’t do a good job, or even if he does.” He tossed the keys awkwardly, but Jonathan caught them without so much as a fumble.

Patrick could feel his eyes lose focus, like they did when he was about to spectacularly lose his temper. He’d had enough of this dump already, enough of working for a -- 

“Dick,” Jonathan said when Kevin was safely out of earshot. 

“I’m going to have a Hummer by the time I’m his age,” Patrick said, and it sounded muffled through the angry whooshing in his ears. “Actually, scrap that because I’m not waiting until I’m almost thirty. Twenty-five, that’s when I’m going to get my first Hummer, and it’ll be purple, the very same shade that fucker’s face will be when he sees it.” He looked at Jonathan and continued. “Right before I run him over.”

Jonathan looked suitably awed in the presence of what was absolutely a solemn vow. 

“Anyway, enjoy,” Patrick said, tugging at his bowtie. “I’m out of here.”

“What?” Jonathan said, following. “Hey, come on, are you quitting? Don’t quit. How terrible can washing a limousine be?”

“A limousine?” Patrick turned around and scoffed in Jonathan’s distressed face. “Try a very old Ford Fiesta.”

“But.” Jonathan looked outside to the small fleet of shiny, black cars parked in a neat, organized line. “Are they not the casino’s cars?”

“Yep,” Patrick agreed. “But one time, the airline lost some rich asshole guest’s designer bag, and when they phoned to say they found it, all the limos were out, so Kevin to the rescue with his trusty supermini. He drove to the airport, and saved the day. Only when he tells the story, there’s a police escort, a personal appearance by Louis Vuitton, and a Congressional Gold Medal.”

Jonathan laughed, and it was such a sweet, dorky sound that Patrick was sorry he wouldn’t hear it again. “Anyway, Kevin now lists his shitheap as a company car, and makes me wash it whenever I piss him off.” He held up a finger. “Correction, he _made_ me wash it whenever I pissed him off. Let’s hear it for the past tense. Yay!”

“Hey, no,” Jonathan said. “What about me? Kevin will think I fired you, and then he’ll think I’m really good a firing people, and he’ll make me do more of it. I don’t want to be the firing guy.”

“Sorry for your troubles, man, but I don’t want to be the in-jail-for-killing-the-boss guy.”

“I’ll help you. We’ll have it done in no time.”

Patrick shrugged, easing out of his waistcoat. 

“We’ll piss on his wheels,” Jonathan said, surprising Patrick into laughing. “We’ll put sugar in the gas tank, and, and… kippers under the mats, and we could take the rubber from the wipers. Actually, no, that could be dangerous.”

Where was this guy a few weeks ago, when Patrick was actively looking for someone to have fun with.

“I know,” Jonathan continued. “We could fog up the windows, and smush our handprints on them. Then when the condensation builds up again, he’ll think we were fooling around in his car. I mean, I just met the guy but I’m pretty sure he’d hate that.” He looked at his hand and then held it out. “I’m Jonny, by the way.”

“Patrick,” Patrick said, reaching over to shake Jonny’s hand. 

“Stay, Patrick. Please.”

 

**Now**

 

Patrick drops by Jonny’s house on pretext of hearing about the date with Darrin. But the truth is, the loose socket has been giving him nightmares. And the rickety bannister. He’s going to start dreaming about Jonny crashing through it while escaping an electrical fire. 

He’s just trying to save Jonny’s life, really.

The doorbell is broken, and nobody hears him pounding on the door, one that Patrick is pleased to note is made from solid wood. Even if the lock gives after two slight shoves. 

There’s no answer when he steps inside and calls out. He keeps calling as he crosses the sticky floor, certain that the house is occupied -- he can hear some weird music and some background TV that sounds like Law and Order. But nobody comes into the kitchen while he fixes the bell’s receiver, or into the hallway while he mends the lock.

He steps outside to try the doorbell, but its piercing screech doesn’t bring anybody from their room, so he climbs the stairs and gets to work securing the bannister. 

“Sorry,” he says when someone finally comes out to investigate the drilling. “Nearly done.”

“Are you fixing stuff?” the guy asks. He’s short, shockingly pale, and has what Patrick suspects is a permanent frown on his face. “Can you fix my curtain rail?”

His name is Arlo, and he’s a Ph.D student from Maine. He typically sleeps by day and studies by night, which somewhat explains the pallor. There’s nothing in the room except for books, a bed covered by a comforter with cartoon books on it, and a closet with books stacked against it.

“Give me the curtains and I’ll hang them while I’m up here,” Patrick says once the rail is secure.

Arlo doesn’t have curtains, mostly because he’s not sure where to buy them. 

Patrick hops down from the base of the bed. “I know a trader who buys and sells soft furnishings,” he says, pulling out his wallet and rifling through the cards inside. He hands one over. “She’ll probably have a set of blackouts for less than 15 bucks. They won’t be new, they may not be a standard fit, and they probably won’t have pictures of books on them, but --” 

“Thought I heard your voice,” Jonny says from the door. “What are you doing here?”

Patrick looks over and smiles. “Hey.”

“If he’s trying to set you up on a date, say no,” Jonny says to Arlo. “Unless nutjobs are your thing.”

So, it didn’t go too well.

Jonny turns his glare on Patrick. “This guy is like a brother to you? You fucking met him twice in your life, and the second time was so you could beg him to go on a date with me.” He pushes away from the doorframe and stomps loudly up his stairs.

“You set people on dates?” Arlo looks almost comically hopeful. 

“He’s kidding,” Patrick says. He steps out onto the landing to answer his ringing phone. “Hey, Luke, thanks for getting back to me. Got a painting gig, if you’re interested.”

“I’m not around this week, man,” Luke says. “I’m on call with the fire department. Maybe next Tuesday or Wednesday?”

“Yeah, that works. It’s for a job I did today, but the plaster won’t be dry until next week anyway. You can’t do Monday?”

“No, I’m going to Decatur to pick up my new car.”

“Oh yeah? What did you get?” 

“Brand new Bimmer. M6 2 door coupe, V8 engine, zero to a hundred in under four seconds. Full leather interior, matt black exterior. Otherwise known as, the new love of my life.”

Patrick’s fingers grip the phone a little tighter. “Oh, yeah? That’s some car. Did you win the lottery?”

“Sort of. Inheritance from my great-aunt.”

“Sorry for your loss. Still, it must be nice to have some extra cash. I mean, you can do lots of things, like, say, take your other half on a nice vacation somewhere.”

“I don’t have another half.”

Patrick pretty much knew that, but it’s good to be certain. “Oh, so you’re single?”

He’s whispering because he doesn’t want Jonny to hear him, but maybe that’s sending a different vibe out to Luke, because he asks, “Why, are you and Lana looking for a bit more meat in your sandwich?”

Patrick takes the phone away from his ear and makes a face at it. “More meat in your sandwich,” he mouths. “Uh, no. We’re all good. But you date guys, right?”

“And girls. Nothing serious with either right now, though.”

Yet, Patrick thinks, nothing serious yet.

He climbs the stairs once he’s said goodbye to Luke, and knocks tentatively on the door. When there’s no answer, he tries the handle but the door is locked from the inside. “Oh, come on, Jonny, it couldn’t have been that bad.”

He hears something that sounds like a muffled fuck off, but the door is unlocked and pulled open just as the doorbell screeches through the house. “What the fuck is that?” 

“That’s your doorbell. Which I fixed, and you are very welcome. Now, people can, you know, come visit you. I can visit you.”

“Maybe I don’t want you visiting me.”

“Seriously,” Patrick says. “It was no trouble, don’t even mention it.”

Jonny rolls his eyes but he lets Patrick brush past him and into the room. 

“So, I’m sorry,” Patrick says, setting down his tool kit to hold up his hands. “I thought he was a good guy, and I thought that you had a lot in common --”

“He was a fucking flat-earther, for god’s sake. And that isn’t even the worst thing about him.”

Patrick’s almost afraid to ask what could be worse than flat-earthing. 

“He was a climate change denier.” Jonny spits the words as if they pain him and he’s looking at Patrick expectantly, like he should also be horrified. Patrick does his best to play along. 

“I mean,” Jonny continues, kicking off his shoes and shucking his shirt. “If you want to be a dumbass and believe that you can fall off the edge of the world, well, knock yourself out, it doesn’t affect the rest of us. But climate change deniers, those fuckers are actively destroying the environment, and ruining it for everyone.” The pants are yanked off, and Patrick decides that now is a good time to have a look at the socket. The fittings have come away from the plaster board, probably from Jonny tugging too hard when unplugging things. It’s a simple job, he just needs to move the socket and replace the screws and rawl plugs. 

“I can drop by later on this week with a bit of plaster and fix up the gap. Maybe go a bit easier when you’re plugging things in and out, huh?”

Jonny isn’t listening. He’s dragged on a pair of shorts, and is reclining on the bed to give Patrick a lecture while he works. Yes, there have been global climate disasters in the past, but each one resulted in mass extinctions. We should be proactively stopping the next one, not speeding it up. And temperatures are not cooler, they are actually _increasing_ , every fucking year. That’s not conjecture, that’s fact, that’s fucking fact, Patrick. As for there being no link between man and climate change, well ninety percent of global scientists agree that it is extremely likely to be the result of human activity. If nine doctors out of ten tell you smoking causes cancer, why the fuck would you listen to the one who says it doesn’t. The reality is the climate is changing, it’s getting hotter, and we’re responsible, and “I don’t fucking date idiots, Patrick.”

“Sorry,” Patrick offers. “About the date. And the, um, environment.” He doesn’t really know what else to say about it; Jonny’s always been more political than him. Patrick looks at energy saving materials through the lens of budgets and regulations. “Anyway, I’m done here, let’s go up onto the roof. This place is like a box.”

Jonny folds his hands behind his head, either reluctant to move, or reluctant to show any sign of real forgiveness. “We lived together in a room smaller than this,” he says, mulish.

“We’re bigger now,” Patrick reasons, and climbs out the window without waiting for a response. “Or you are anyway. Come on. You can give me more of that shitty beer, and I’ll tell you what else I’ve done to make up for Darrin.”

“You can make up for it by never setting me up on a date again,” Jonny mumbles, but he follows.

“You’ll like this one,” Patrick promises, just as his phone chimes. **Where are you?**

“Fuck.” 

“What’s up?”

“Lana,” Patrick says absently, already keying in a response. “I forgot to tell her I was coming here this evening.” **Did we have plans?**

“Do you need to go?”

Patrick is thinking that he might when another message comes through. **I guess we didn’t. Going for a drink with Sarah. See you whenever.**

**Sorry** he sends back, and settles into the crappy deckchair. “So, how would you like to go on a date with a firefighter who has a really cool car?”

Jonny side-eyes him a little. “What kind of fuel does it run off?”

 

**Before**

 

Working at the casino sucked, for many reasons. The waistcoats were too tight, the bowties felt like they were made from fiberglass, and the eight hours shifts were typically a quarter that long again. Patrick and Jonny usually worked the same noon-til-eight-but-really-ten-pm rotation. It was shattering, leg aching work, serving snacks, fetching change for the slot machines, and dealing with testy, tired, and overserved gamblers.

Jonny tried to quit on the second day. “I’m done,” he said.

“Like fuck you are,” Patrick scoffed. “You’re not the firing guy, remember? You don’t get to fire yourself.”

“But this is fucking _bullshit_. We stopped getting paid almost ninety minutes ago. This has to be illegal.”

Patrick looked around - it was beginning to thin out, a little lull before the midnight crowd settled in. If they were going to get away, it was going to be now. “Hannah’s just come on. I’ll tell her we’re leaving. You cut through the kitchen and meet me at the exit in five. I have a surprise.”

Jonny didn’t look even remotely convinced, but he did as Patrick said, and a few minutes later they were walking around the back of the building, beyond the delivery yard, and into the biggest of a row of sheds. 

“What?” Jonny asked when he was ushered inside.

“This,” Patrick said, hitting the light switch and gesturing to the hot tub. “Come on, let’s get the cover off.”

Jonny helped but then looked uncertain as Patrick almost dislocated his own shoulders in the hurry to get his clothes off.

“What if someone comes in and catches us?” he asked, fiddling unenthusiastically with his bow tie.

“They won’t.” Patrick shrugged off his boxer shorts because commando is the only way to jacuzzi. “This is where they keep the broken things that are in need of repair.” He gestured at the shelves full of vacuum cleaners, TVs, coffee makers, irons, and a whole other range of electrical appliances that were tagged with yellow post-its.

“But this isn’t broken.”

“Because I fixed it.” Patrick stepped into the tub and hit a power button that groaned and brought the water to bubbling life. He closed his eyes, and kept them shut until Jonny finally got in.

“Oh my fucking god.” And that was the money tone. “Oh. My. Fucking. God.”

“Right?” Patrick said, turning to see Jonny’s head tipped towards the roof, his mouth open in wonder. They didn’t say anything for a few long minutes, just made contented murmurs that mostly got lost in the whir of the pump.

“What’s the deal?” Jonny sounded stoned, his voice slow and slurry. 

“With the hot tub? We’re waiting on the replacement part that nobody ordered, or is going to order in the near future. I’ve a bit of mutually beneficial deal going on with the maintenance guys -- I fix the shit they can’t, or they can’t be bothered to, and we share the rewards. Which means that we’re also sharing this water, but there’s lots of bromine and Ozone.”

“And you fixed this? By yourself?”

Patrick nodded. “My dad’s side of the family are big in construction.” He’d been around sites since he was old enough to wear a hard hat. There wasn’t much he hadn’t picked up -- he was curious, determined, a slogger. His uncles and cousins marvelled at his quick hands and perseverance. Building, tiling, carpentry, plumbing, plastering, reading architect plans, he could do it all. “I can even do things I’m not qualified on paper to do, like wiring a building or installing a heating system.”

“Impressive,” Jonny said, Patrick liked the praise. “Why not work on the maintenance crew here? The hours and money have to be better.”

True, but Patrick was looking for a change, a short vacation away from the everyday. “I wanted to try dressing up for work instead of dressing down.”

They stayed there until their skin grew wrinkly and their limbs were revived. And when they were dressed again, with bow ties and socks stuffed into their pants pockets, Patrick realized that he didn’t want to say goodnight just yet, that he wanted to show off some more to Jonny.

And it was gratifying to watch Jonny’s expression change from sympathy when he saw Patrick’s tiny single room right over the nightclub, to blatant lust when the curtains were pulled back to reveal the holy grail of things not available in staff quarters -- a clunky A/C unit. 

“This is better than the hot tub,” he gasped.

“It’s a little loud,” Patrick said, turning it on to demonstrate. “But it drowns out the music at night.”

“It’s amazing. Do you mind if I…?” Jonny gestured to his clothes and then stripped back down to his boxer briefs in two quick moves. “Oh my god, I’m cold.” He threw himself on the bed and rolled around. “Sweet, sweet cold,” he groaned, making Patrick laugh.

“There’s more.” Patrick lifted the large cardboard box from the chest of drawers at the foot of the bed. Underneath was a mini-fridge and a small TV wired for cable. “I’ve got snacks and four hundred channels. I mostly watch hockey reruns on mute. Do you like hockey?”

It was as well Jonny was lying on the bed because Patrick would swear he actually fainted then.

*

Their friendship was one that they fell into without ever navigating the usual path from strangers to best friends forever and ever. They shared Patrick’s bed that night, and every night afterwards. It wasn’t ever weird, well, maybe in the mornings when they woke hard and achy, but Patrick had been waking up like that before Jonny ever started sleeping beside him. He figured it was the same for Jonny, and they weren’t going to get awkward about biology. 

Jonny was important, and Patrick kept him close by handing over the parts of himself that he was typically territorial about - his time, his personal space, his trust. And the strangest part was how easy it was. They were together all the time, swapping out shifts, even volunteering to work weekend days if the other was scheduled. Newer staff would sometimes admit that they didn’t know who was who. “Which one are you, Kane or Toews?”

They always lied when they answered.

They didn’t fight, not about anything serious. There was a two day heated debate about the correct pronunciation of _minutiae_ , which they eventually had to disagree to disagree on. But they never stopped talking.

It was right. 

Until one day when Jonny said no, he wasn’t coming back to Patrick’s room, and Patrick just blinked stupidly at him because he hadn’t asked. He just assumed. They were going to eat their food, kick each other under the table, mock Kevin’s attempt to get a goatee going, and then go upstairs to watch a movie. It was a standard day. But Jonny was doing a whole lot of other things that were setting off alarm bells in Patrick’s head - he was looking over Patrick’s shoulder, he was standing further away than usual, and he wasn’t smiling. He hadn’t even touched the fries Patrick had bought him. 

He left and didn’t come back, and Patrick eventually got up to walk back to his room, every part of him heavy. 

It was dumb to feel this way, to sit on the edge of his bed with a lump in his throat that he couldn’t swallow, like he was winded. He knew enough to know he was seriously overreacting, but he didn’t really understand anything else; why Jonny went away so abruptly, and why he, Patrick, was so stunned and stupidly hurt about it.

Jonny came in just as Patrick’s fingertips had gone numb from tapping on the comforter.

“Sorry,” he said, sitting down, shifting until their thighs were touching.

“That’s okay.” 

“I went back to my room.”

“Okay.”

“And I just want you to know that I would rather be there with you, than be here without you.”

That made no sense. Jonny shared a bigger room with two other guys and a giant fan. He and Patrick never spent any time there.

“I just. I’m not using you. I need you to know that I don’t just hang out with you for the A/C, or the TV, or any of that stuff.”

Patrick hadn’t thought for a moment that he did. 

“And I don’t have anything that I can give to you. I’m not much good at fixing things, and I don’t have any money. I’m… I have to save most of what I earn. It’s to go towards my college registration fees.”

“I don’t care about that,” Patrick said, utterly baffled. “Why would you think --”

“I’m not bringing anything to the table.”

Patrick was eighteen, he wasn’t sure how to tell Jonny that he was bringing plenty. He made Patrick happy. He made Patrick laugh. Patrick wanted to be with him all the time. The rest was just stuff. Stuff that Patrick had found or pilfered, and made use of. His mom often said he was a bit of a pack rat. And maybe Patrick’s income, such as it was, was more disposable, but fuck it, it still wasn’t much. He was buying Jonny fries, not caviar.

“And I like you, Patrick.”

He’d been unprepared for that, both the words and the rush of relief that made him feel suddenly boneless, that dissolved the knot in throat. “I like you, too.”

“No,” Jonny said, eyes dark and intent. He shifted closer, leaning in until his breath misted on Patrick’s face. “I wish I could buy you stuff or get you stuff, because. I like you.”

There was maybe an inch between their mouths, and Patrick’s moved towards Jonny’s like it knew where it was going. And that’s when everything suddenly made sense. 

 

**Now**

 

Patrick can be an asshole at times, and knowing it or declaring it doesn’t make him any less of an asshole. He walks away from things he doesn’t want to deal with, from conversations he doesn’t want to have. Lana knows the best way to pin him down is over the phone. He could leave the room, but he had to take his cell with him.

“I really don’t want to make a thing of this. You are who you are, and maybe it was a bit much when I sprung the moving in thing. I mean, we’ve only been together for almost two years.”

Patrick digests the sarcasm in the last sentence while he waits for the _but_.

“But I’m not going to take a step backwards. That bullshit from the other night - _do we have plans_? I mean, what the fuck was that. We’re together, Pat. We’re a couple in a long term relationship. Which means that we make plans to see other people, not each other. I’m not going back to the days where I have to make an appointment to see you.”

That’s fair. “I get that, and I’m sorry. But there’s no big thing here, Lana. I was distracted when I was texting, that’s all.” 

She doesn’t ask what was distracting him, thankfully, and after a few seconds of deliberate silence, Patrick hears the rustle of a bag of chips over the line. “Doritos for dinner again?” he asks.

“Yeah,” she says through a mouthful. “It’s nuts in here tonight. We’re down two nurses, and I’m having my break in the broom cupboard so I can get five minutes of peace.”

Patrick makes what he hopes are soothing noises. “Well, call me when you’re done, and I’ll come get you.”

“Nah, it’s okay. Hannah picked me up, so she’ll drop me off, too. I could get her to drop me off at yours? Although I don’t want to wake you.” 

It’s a little trip wire that Patrick quickly sidesteps. “I don’t mind if you do. I’ll even make you a sandwich. What would you like?”

“Ugh, anything at all. Fuck, that’s a code, I’ve got to go. I’ll see you later.”

She’s gone before Patrick can say goodbye. He puts his phone down beside him just as it rings again. “Roast beef with horseradish mayo. Do you want wholemeal or a bagel?”

“Wholemeal is better for you,” someone who isn’t Lana answers. “Listen man, I’ve got bad news.”

“Luke?”

“Uh-huh.” Luke sounds like he’s on the move, breathless and hassled. “Got called in, can’t do the blind date. Sorry.”

Patrick sits up straight. “What? When is your date?”

“Eh, in twenty minutes? Look, I need to get off the phone now.”

“Shit. Well, call Jonny, explain and maybe you can reschedule --

“Yeah, no time. I’m running out the door as we speak. Tell him I’m real sorry.”

Fuck. “Hey, wait, wait just a second. Tell me where you guys were meeting.”

*

Jonny’s already at the bar when Patrick gets there. He looks good, dressed the more formal side of casual, and Patrick feels bad for him. Bad for Luke, too, because the guy is missing out.

“Hey,” he says, and Jonny’s eyes widen in surprise.

“Hey. This is a coincidence. I’m meeting Luke here. Although --” Jonny glances up at the clock. “He’s moving from fashionably late into rude late.”

“Yeah, it’s more like he’s-not-coming late,” Patrick says, wincing. “Sorry.”

A flicker of annoyance crosses Jonny’s face, pinching it. “He couldn’t have called? Oh, that’s why you’re here. Why didn’t you just call me?”

“There wasn’t a lot of time, and I knew you’d already be on the way here when Luke called me. Look, it isn’t you, man, it’s the, uh, fires.”

“The fires?” Jonny repeats blankly, and then he starts to laugh. It’s more of a ridiculous-situation laugh, but it’s a step up from the dull sounding dejection.

“Jon?” 

They both turn towards the server standing behind them with a couple of menus in her hand. “Your booth is ready,” she says, all easy charm and enthusiastic smile. “This way.”

“Sorry, no,” Jon says. “I won’t be staying. There’s been a fire. Apparently.”

The server’s smile slips a little as she looks over at Patrick, and okay, he’s not Jonny’s date, but, “I’m hungry,” he says. “And those wings look awesome.”

“They are good,” the server says, and they’re both looking at Jonny, coaxing him into the booth with their eyes.

“Fine,” Jonny says, giving in and going to where she leads.

“You don’t have to do this,” he says, sighing huffily at his menu.

Patrick slides in opposite him, and quickly orders for them both before the server leaves. “I don’t have to do anything,” he says, kicking Jonny under the table. “And I’m not just staying because I’m oh for two in the quest to find your soulmate. I’m hungry, I’m here, Lana is working, and you’re not the worst person to kill a couple of hours with.”

“I feel so special,” Jonny drawls, and Patrick kicks him again, determined to knock Jonny out of his funk.

“So, today at work -- I had a fight with a racoon, I threw a spanner right through a wall, and I was thirty minutes late for a job because I soaked myself after a pipe burst.”

He knows it’s a mistake, even before he finishes speaking, even before Jonny goes deathly still. Patrick thinks about kicking himself. That was dumb, that was _epically_ dumb. 

“The lie is that you were late,” Jonny says just as Patrick’s choking on the silence. “You hate being late.”

“I also hate racoons. They creep the fuck out of me.”

“I remember. But I’m guessing the racoon started the fight, and probably won it.” He’s smiling now, that smug, pleased with himself smirk that Patrick remembers from such times as when Jonny was right about something, and when Jonny made Patrick come his brains out.

“That’s what happened to the wall and the pipe,” Patrick says. “Fucker came at me from nowhere.”

“So you threw a spanner at it?”

“No, pay attention, I threw a spanner at the wall beside it. By the time I had it fixed, I had to go to my next job soaked to the skin.”

“But you weren’t late.”

“I wasn’t late,” Patrick agrees, just as the server arrives back with their pitcher of beer. It’s a timely interruption, an opportunity to move away from what Patrick started here, but when he’s pouring the drinks Jonny says --

“Two summers ago, I was a pool guy for Eugene Levy. I was a personal chef for Eugene Levy. I made out with Eugene Levy’s son, Dan.”

The smug smile is back, so, “Like anyone would fucking pay you to cook,” Patrick snorts. “Which you know I’d know, so what you really want me to know is that you made out with Dan Levy.”

Jonny grins, and Patrick wants to throw something at him -- a napkin, a bread roll, his lips. “I’m so jealous,” he admits.

“Yeah?” Jonny says, leaning in a little. “Of who?”

Patrick wonders if he’s heard right, and he’s no idea what his face is doing, but whatever it is, it’s making Jonny laugh.

“Wow, someone loves himself a bit of him,” Patrick manages, and he’s going to say something else, but the server is there with mountains of chicken wings, sliding the bowls onto the table, and explaining the dips. It all looks and smells amazing.

“Also,” Patrick says when she’s left. “It’s, of whom.”

Jonny just laughs some more.

*

It’s a good night, the kind that goes on later than planned but without ever dragging. The server, who had been worried about getting them into a booth three hours earlier, is now looking worried about getting them back out.

“We’ll take the bill, please, and some boxes for the leftovers,” Jonny says when she starts hovering with intent. He also insists on paying it, slapping Patrick’s hand away when he reaches for it for the wallet. “I brought my own date money, Dad, I’ve got this.”

Patrick rolls his eyes at the sarcasm. “Just trying to make up for tonight’s… situation.”

“You can make up for it by fixing the door on my closet, and picking a non-crazy date that’s actually going to show up next time.”

“Really?” Patrick says, surprised. “You’re giving me another shot at this?”

Jonny smiles as he tosses some bills into the wallet. “Make it a good one, Patrick,” he says, reaching for his coat.

Which is what Patrick is struggling with when he gets home thirty minutes later. He has no idea where to get another date for Jonny, and so lost in thought that the sound of a key in the door startles him.

“Hey,” Lana calls from the hallway, her shoes thumping on the matt. She walks through to the kitchen, talking all the way. “Oh, man, you would believe the shit that went on in there tonight… I swear to god, all I want to do is eat this sandwich and fall into bed.”

Patrick freezes on the sofa. He hears the fridge door open, and waits, trying to think of something better than _I forgot to make you a sandwich._

He’s still waiting a minute later, nothing but silence coming from the other room. He gets up and slowly walks to where Lana is -- sitting on the kitchen counter, scoffing chicken wings straight from the leftovers box.

“You went out for wings?” she says, waving a bone and licking the sauce from around her mouth. “Just for me? You are the best boyfriend!”

 

**Before**

 

It was a question they would be asked over and over again. What on earth made them think getting married was a good idea?

There were lots of answers. Alcohol, stupidity, youth. And Kevin.

Kevin definitely deserved some of the blame, even if he avoided all of the shouting. He was the one who was boring Patrick at the bar with some very unlikely story of imaginary exploits in the South of France. He was part of the way through an unlikely tale featuring a pomeranian, a yacht and Penelope Cruz’s cousin when Jonny knocked shoulders with Patrick in greeting.

“Ready to go?”

“But I’ll miss the end of Kevin’s captivating story,” Patrick said, and he meant it to be subtly sarcastic. But he misjudged. It was mean, and it made a few people around snicker. 

“You know what, Kane?” Kevin snapped. “You can get the fuck out of here. Now.”

“What if I want a drink?” Patrick mused. There was something about Kevin’s embarrassed flush that was very satisfying, and Patrick was reluctant to leave it. 

“Something frothy and frivolous, with one of those little umbrellas,” Jonny suggested. 

“I love those umbrellas,” Patrick said.

Kevin curled his lip, probably in what he mistakenly thought was a vicious sneer. “You two couldn’t afford a fucking glass of tap water.” It wasn’t the words so much as the nasty tone that made those who’d been listening slope away. Patrick opened his mouth, probably to lose his job, but Jonny kissed him before he could. There was no tongue, or groping, just Jonny at his side, lips pressed against Patrick’s. He broke away with a lewd, smacking sound.

“Gotta piss,” he said, more to Kevin than Patrick. Kevin watched him go, mouth agape, and then turned to Patrick looking gratifyingly uncertain.

“Two hundred bucks if you wanna see more,” Patrick said, wishing he had some gum he could snap.

He went back to their room, and when Jonny wasn’t back in thirty minutes, he got a little worried. He sincerely hoped that the piss Jonny was taking was happening in a Ford Fiesta.

Jonny came in just as Patrick was going to go looking for him. “Got you a present,” he said, dropping a mound of laundry on the bed.

“Sheets,” Patrick said. “You shouldn’t have.”

But the sheets were the wrapping that Jonny unravelled to reveal a paper bag and two magnums of house champagne. 

“Woah. Where did these come from?”

Jonny shrugged and kneed his his way up the mattress to Patrick. “Don’t let that dickhead upset you,” he said in a low tone, his eyes angry and intense.

Patrick reached to cup his face, pressing his thumb into the hinge of Jonny’s jaw. “He didn’t. He annoyed me, but he always annoys me.”

He suspected that Jonny was the one who was upset, and he leaned in to kiss him better. What started off as comfort quickly became needy, and Patrick loved it when Jonny kissed him like that, like he was _devouring_ him.

“He’s a fucking asshole,” Jonny said, pressing the words into the column of Patrick’s neck, and Patrick drew back to look at him sternly.

“Guess how much I don’t want to talk about him.” He leaned in to dot soft kisses across Jonny’s cheekbones, eating up the sigh Jonny let out when Patrick bit and then sucked on his earlobe. “Guess how much I want to keep doing this.” 

Jonny groaned, the way he always did when Patrick whispered wet sounding words into his ears.

“Come on, off,” Patrick said, pulling Jonny’s t-shirt over his head. He let himself get distracted by the smooth skin under his fingers, jumping where he touched. His tongue followed his hands, nipping, licking, while Jonny squirmed above him, his palms braced against the wall. “Guess how much I want to fuck you,” Patrick whispered.

Jonny grunted like he’d been shot, and yeah, maybe Patrick’s dirty talk was still at the in-progress stage, but Jonny sure as hell appreciated it. And he meant every word -- when Jonny was sucking him off, Patrick would tell him how good it was, how good Jonny’s mouth felt wrapped around his cock. Or when he’d jerk Jonny off and tell him how pretty his dick was, how much Patrick loved the weight of it in his hand. And that one time when he’d fingered Jonny, he’d looked right in his eyes and said he wished it was his cock in there, and --

Jonny came, and then wouldn’t look at Patrick for at least twenty minutes.

But he was looking at Patrick now, a little wild around the eyes. “Do it,” he said, shimmying out of his jeans. His voice was reedy and demanding, and it was doing terrible things to Patrick’s self-control.

“But we’ve never… are you sure? I was just _saying_ ...”

Jonny was naked now, naked and hard, and back giving Patrick thirsty kisses. “Fuck me,” he said “That’s what I want. If that’s what you want.”

“Yeah,” Patrick said, stunned. “Yes. I want.”

Jonny lay back like an Adonis, idly stroking himself while Patrick divested himself of the rest his clothing, and almost skulled himself while trying to toe his socks off. It was intensely gratifying that Jonny was still hard by the end of that.

Patrick fumbled getting the lube from under the mattress, and he tried not to show how nervous he was. But his fingers were shaky as he tugged off the cap, and they were trembling when they spread Jonny’s legs.

“Hey.” Jonny say up and tugged hard to Patrick’s wrist, steadying it. “We don’t have to do this, if you don’t want, or if you’re not ready.”

“Cut me some slack,” Patrick said, smiling a little. “It’s my first time. I’m allowed to be nervous.”

Jonny smiled back. “I’ve never done this before, either, and I’m not nervous. Wanna know why? A few weeks ago, I’d never had a blow-job, and you made that so good for me. I’d never been fingered before last week, and you made that so good for me. And I’ve never been fucked before, and I know that you’re going to make that good for me, too.” He pulled Patrick closer and kissed him until Patrick remembered that he’d made Jonny come in a variety of creative ways, and this was just going to be another.

“Do it,” Jonny said, the words pulsing on Patrick’s lips. He lay back, holding Patrick’s gaze, not turning away from it, not even when Patrick pushed a slick finger behind Jonny’s balls, and into him.

“More,” Jonny said, and so Patrick added a second.

“More,” Jonny said, and Patrick made it three, holding steady while Jonny rocked and squirmed.

“You’re gorgeous like this,” Patrick says, pushing up on his knees, pressing in even further. He prodded until he found that spot that made Jonny arch his back, and for the first time he looked away from Patrick, and that was because his eyes were rolling back in his head. 

Yeah, Patrick had this. He also had a hard, leaking cock that was really looking forward to getting involved in the proceedings.

“You’re amazing,” he told Jonny, pulling his fingers out to coat them with more lube, and then back in again, faster and harder, messy and filthy. 

“Now,” Jonny said, kicking at Patrick. “Come on, come on, come _on_ ”

Patrick nodded, and wet his own cock before carefully easing his way inside. He had been afraid of hurting Jonny, but the sound Jonny made was a sigh of pure relief. Patrick willed himself to go slow, go easy, shaking with the effort of it. But Jonny was impatient, reaching around to grip Patrick’s hip and urging him in deeper, and even deeper again.

They kissed clumsily, Jonny’s cock brushing against Patrick’s belly as they settled into a rhythm that was a bit off, a bit jerky. But it wasn’t long before it started to feel really good, and there was friction, and heat, and sweat that slid between them. Patrick wanted Jonny to come first, but his hips were doing their own thing, pistoning faster and faster, punching delicious little grunts from Jonny.

“I’m gonna,” Patrick said, that little ache coiling up in his lower back. “Jonny, I have to --”

He did, pressed in as far as he could go, bucking and trembling, until he was utterly drained.

“Patrick,” Jonny whined. 

He got it together, barely, still hard inside Jonny as he jerked him maybe five times before Jonny’s body locked up tight, and he came, hard, spilling onto Patrick’s stomach and thigh.

They lay there for a long time after, catching their breaths and coming back down to earth.

“Told you,” Jonny said, rearranging them so that Patrick was almost in his lap. “Told you it would be great. We should have a drink to celebrate.” He reached for one of the bottles that had been knocked onto the floor, and they laughed when the cork popped without any fizz or spray. It was sweet, though, and even sweeter with sticky, post-orgasm kisses.

“Hold on,” Jonny said, taking another mouthful of both the champagne and Patrick before reaching for the small paper bag. “My man wanted an umbrella, so --” He shook about thirty toothpick umbrellas onto the comforter, and picked up the nearest one. He managed to thread it through Patrick’s hair without taking his eye out, and then sat back to admire his handiwork. “Perfect,” he decided, leaning in for a kiss.

They spent the next however long slugging booze from the bottle, and then the second bottle, while Jonny made art of Patrick’s head. Jonny was drinking quickly, his eyes glazing and drooping a little.

“You okay?” Patrick asked when the bottle ran dry.

“Drunk,” Jonny admitted. “Stop moving. You’re losing umbrellas.”

“How do I look?”

“Amazing,” Jonny said, and then listed off a whole host of other adjectives, kissing Patrick between them all. Adorable. Gorgeous. Beautiful. Stunning.

Patrick laughed. “Man, you’re a sappy drunk. What’ll we do now, seeing as I’m not allowed to move? Want to play a game?”

“I spy?”

Jonny deserved the pinch he got for being so lame. “Two truths and a lie.”

“How do you play that?”

“It’s easy, you make three statements, two are true, one is false, and I have to guess which one is the lie.”

“Okay,” Jonny said, brow furrowed in concentration. “The capital of Spain is Barcelona. The capital of Italy is Rome. The capital of France is Paris.”

“No,” Patrick said, really trying not to be so endeared by Jonny’s adorable hopelessness. “It’s not a general knowledge thing. It’s three statements about you. Stuff that you’ve done, or that has happened to you.”

Jonny hmmed for a few seconds. “You know what I think? I think you don’t know what the capital of Spain is.”

Patrick lost a few umbrellas in the ensuing tussle.

“Okay, okay,” Jonny huffed, still squirming from Patrick’s fingers in his ribs. “Still not hearing the answer. But - ow! Fine. I love you, I don’t love you, I love you. There, what’s the lie?”

“The lie is you’re a dumbass,” Patrick said once he could speak again. Jonny was wasted, and Patrick knew about drunk talk, but Jonny looked like he really meant what he was saying. And that knocked the breath clean out of Patrick. “And the game goes something like this. Two years ago, I spent the summer as a foreign exchange student in Germany. Three years ago, I spent the summer investigating the death of Tupac with my sister. Four years ago, I spent the summer in traction after breaking my femur.”

Jonny squinted as he pondered all this. “Can I ask follow up questions?”

“No.”

“Doesn’t matter, I know which one is the lie. You told me that you’d never had a passport, so the lie is you’ve never been an exchange student in Germany.”

“See?” Patrick said, handing over an umbrella as a prize. “That’s how it’s done.” 

They got up and dressed, mostly because they had to piss, and Patrick shared a bathroom down the corridor. And then they went out for a walk to show off Patrick’s hair-do.

“Hair don’t,” Patrick snorted, and then realized that he was more drunk than he’d thought. The fresh air was really doing a number on him. It made him say something really dumb. “Marry me.”

Jonny wobbled a little and then said. “Okay.”

It only took twenty minutes to get a marriage licence, and ten minutes after that, they were swaying together in a little chapel while a lady in a bad wig and a stuffed bra talked them through their options. She told them her name was Dolly Pardon, and winked like she was inviting them in on a lewd joke. For three hundred dollars, she said, they could have the ring package - which included a short but legal ceremony, two wedding rings that may need resizing somewhere else at a later date, a photo, and some musical accompaniment.

“Although,” she added, frowning at the guy with the guitar near the door. “Our usual singer has come down with a case of I-hate-my-job about an hour ago, and so we’re training in Barry over there.”

Barry gave them a solemn tip of his ginormous stetson. It was new, much like Barry, who hadn’t been there long enough to earn himself a kitchy name. “I do a mean Stand By Your Man,” he said.

“Anything else?” Patrick asked. He really didn’t want his wedding song to be a gimmick.

“Friends in Low Places,” Barry offered.

So, Patrick stood by his man as Dolly married them and Barry warbled about good times and bad times and doing things they didn’t understand. There was a brief intermission where Barry had to put down his guitar to take the photos, and a slightly longer one for Patrick and Jonny to compose themselves after a fit of giggles.

And then they were husbands, and the deal was sealed with a sticky kiss, lashings of tongue. Patrick gave everyone an umbrella from his hair, and he left holding his husband’s hand to have husbandly sex with his husband.

Forever and ever.

 

**Now**

 

Patrick fixes Jonny’s house while buying time to fix Jonny’s future. Jonny sits on the bed and watches while he secures the closet, puts new handles on it, knocks the skirting board into place, and even coats the walls with a fresh lick of paint. He also finds a second-hand headboard in mint condition that replaces the piece of chipboard that was stuck on the top of Jonny’s bed.

Now all he has to do is find Jonny a man to put in said bed.

There’s a guy who’s a maybe. His name is Philip, and he works out at the gym in one of the centers Patrick maintains. He’s buff, he’s hot, and he’s single, although Patrick suspects the last is mostly down to Philip’s WWE obsession. His wardrobe seems to consist of a wide selection of CM Punk t-shirts, and his workout playlist is all wrestler entrance songs. _I Am A Real American_ definitely gets him pumped up. 

He feels a bit Bottom of the Barrel, and lingers on the maybe list.

Sometimes Jonny isn’t home when Patrick calls over, but the rest of the housemates are happy to entertain him while he waits. And fixes the sockets in the kitchen, and replaces the cooker hood, and installs a washing machine that he got for free.

Bonnie makes him a cup of coffee and sits on the stairs while he varnishes the rail. “I can’t tell you how happy we all are that you met Jonny.”

Patrick hides his smile in his cup.

“I mean, not only because you’ve made this place almost habitable, but because you make him happy. He’s like a different guy now.”

He should correct her, he should do that now, right now, put an end to an understandable assumption, but instead he asks, “He wasn’t happy before?”

“Oh, I’m sure he was,” Bonnie answers quickly. “He was just always… busy, I guess? I mean, he’s still busy now, but he was always running to his room or out the door. Now he stops to talk, and most of that’s boasting about how awesome your work is, and he’s all smiley and proud boyfriend. His whole face lights up.” Her smile is teasing. “It’s gross.”

Patrick suddenly feels a bit gross himself, and his stomach twists some more when his phone chimes another damnation. **I’ve missed you this week!! Can you pick me up from work? We could go get some of those delicious wings. Lxxx** Followed by three heart emojies. 

The time has come to scrape the barrel.

*

He sets everything up between Jonny and Philip, and then tries not to think about it too much. It might not even be a disaster -- it’s not like Jonny’s without his own quirks. They’ll like each other, or they won’t. They’re both grown ups, even if one of them is wearing Hustle, Loyalty and Respect wristbands.

“So, you like this one,” the salesman is saying, and Patrick does, he likes it very much. He listens wistfully as the guy talks Patrick’s type of dirty. Steel tubing chassis, Spicer axles, 24 HP traction motor, redesigned hydraulic system for --

“Sorry,” Patrick says when his phone chimes in his pocket. “Carry on.”

The guy gives Patrick’s pants an evil look and goes back to his spiel. “We’ll have a floor model in next week. Make sure you drop by, and, um.”

“I’m not answering it,” Patrick assures him, and he’s not. He doesn’t care how often it rings, Jonny can shout at him later.

“Okay, so yeah, we’ll have a floor model in by Friday, if you’re around, and we can arrange for you to see it on the ice if you’re interested. And if you’re serious about getting into the resurfacing industry, this is the model to go for. Each one is built by hand, and you can tell that just by the innovative control placement, allowing the driver to put the pressure… you know, maybe that’s an emergency.”

It’s certainly not stopping, so Patrick takes his phone from his pocket, and feels a cowardly rush of relief when he sees Lana’s name flashing across the screen. “Hey,” he says, moving away from the salesman with an apologetic wave. “What’s up? Everything okay?”

“I’m done for the day, can you pick me up?”

“Sure, but I thought you were working until nine.”

“How far away are you?”

“About fifteen minutes. Is everything okay?” 

“Of course. Can you park and come in? I’ve cleared out my locker, and I have more crap than I can carry.”

Patrick really doesn’t want to, but he has no excuse other than _I don’t want to_ , so twenty minutes later he’s walking through the double doors, sanitizing his hands extra vigorously. 

Lana is waiting for him and beckons him through another set of doors, ones made of heavy plastic, and Patrick definitely doesn’t want to be here. It’s a long corridor of tiny cubicles, all of them fitted with curtains on rails. This is where people get stitched up, or have bones set in plaster, or die of gunshot wounds. 

“Why am I here?” he asks, following Lana’s quick and silent march. “Am I even allowed in here?”

She stops at the last but one cubicle and pulls at the curtain. “In there.”

Patrick looks in, and his stomach bottoms out. Jonny is sitting on the bed, his legs hanging over the edge. There’s a big bandage around his head, and his t-shirt is splattered with blood.

“Thought you could do with seeing a friendly face,” Lana says, and Patrick can tell by the warmth in her voice that she isn’t talking to him. He dares a glance at her, but she’s looking at Jonny. “Not too much talking, and try not to move. I’m going to catch up with Dr. Tanner, and I’ll be back in ten minutes. I’ll be ready to leave then.” The last sentence is frosty, directed at Patrick, and pretty much tells him that he’ll be leaving with her.

She drags the curtain across noisily on her way out, and Patrick lets out the breath he’s been holding, tries to steady himself on weakened knees. Too bad that there isn’t another bed in here, he could do with a lie down himself.

“I’m okay,” Jonny says. 

Patrick doesn’t believe him. The hospital isn’t the place for people who are okay. “That’s a lot of blood.”

“You know how head wounds are. They bleed heavily because of the amount of blood vessels near the surface.”

Patrick can feel himself nod, but he’s mostly trying to process what he’s looking at. “What happened?”

“Surprise wrestling move, although it was an accident. I wasn’t paying attention, mostly because once Philip started talking about his top five wrestlers, I started thinking up excuses to ditch him. I’d just settled on stomach cramps when he suddenly made some sort of crazy kicking move. Scared the shit out of me, and I mostly fell over my own feet. On a crowded street, but thankfully the pain took the edge off the humiliation.”

“Oh my god,” Patrick says, sliding a hip onto the bed before he falls over, and they need a new cubicle. “When your mom finds out that I put you in hospital again, she is going to fucking kill me.”

“I’m going to fucking kill you,” Jonny says. “That’s if Lana doesn’t get there first.” He drops his eyes, looking suddenly guilty. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to make trouble for you. It’s just that I recognized her name, and I remembered you saying she worked here, and I don’t know, I was still in a bit of shock, so I just started babbling. I wouldn’t have said anything to her if I’d known she didn’t know about me.”

“It’s fine,” Patrick says, even though it really isn’t. “I just, I don’t know, I guess I didn’t know how she’d feel about me spending time with my ex-husband, so I never really got around to telling her. Don’t look at me like that. I know, okay? And believe me, I’m going to know a whole lot more when she gets me home.”

That seems to cheer Jonny up. “She’s nice,” he says, and Patrick nods.

She’s also back, brushing by Patrick like he isn’t even there. “I have good news and bad news.” 

Patrick knows she’s blindsided and hurt, but she keeps that away from Jonny. Her tone is warm, reassuring, and she leans in to really speak to him. “The good news is, Dr. Tanner is pretty confident that twelve stitches and a nasty headache is as bad as it’s going to get. The bad news is, we’re going to keep you in a little longer to make sure.” She cuts off Jonny’s protest with a gentle touch to his arm. “You live alone, Jonathan, and for the next few hours or so, it’s best that you have someone with you. It’s just precaution.”

I’ll stay, Patrick wants to say. I’ll stay with him, watch him, make sure he’s okay. But he keeps quiet because this may be his fault, but it’s not his place. His place is with his girlfriend.

“I have some pull in here,” Lana continues, smiling. “So, you’ll have great company, the best pain meds, and access to the chocolate in the staff lounge. Okay?”

Jonny looks pained, but nods reluctantly. “Okay.”

*

It’s quiet in the car, and Patrick gets the ball rolling by saying something dumb.

“Is he really going to be okay?”

Lana can’t seem to find her voice for a few seconds, and when she does it’s ice cold. “Are you sure that’s the question you want to open with?”

“I’m sorry,” he says, keeping his eyes on the road. “But whatever you’re thinking, you’re wrong.”

“Oh, so you didn’t lie to me? You haven’t been lying to me for the past few weeks? I’m wrong about all of that?”

“No,” he admits, sighing. “But there’s a reason, and it isn’t that I’m cheating on you with Jonny.”

“I know that,” she says immediately. “And not because you told me, but because he did. He just spewed it all out there, how you’ve been helping him fix his house and finding him a boyfriend, and taking him out for wings.” Her voice breaks on the last part. “Wings. Isn’t that just fucking perfect.”

“I can explain, I promise. Just hear me out.”

“Fine,” she says, turning to press her head against the window. “You can explain. After you drop me home.”

So, Patrick waits until they’re sitting in the small kitchen that Lana shares with a collective of other hospital types. They’re at the table, jackets still on, no cups of coffee to fiddle with.

“I’m listening,” Lana says, and Patrick starts talking. He tells her everything, calling Erica, calling Andrée, going to see Jonny, being concerned about cutting the alimony, and the plan, the masterplan to set Jonny up with a decent, financially comfortable guy, and then everyone could live happily ever after.

“Oh my god,” she whispers when he finishes. “It’s actually worse than I thought.” She’d been sitting ramrod straight, her body taut with the tension, but suddenly she sags, burying her head in her hands. For a horrifying moment Patrick thinks she’s crying, but her shoulders shake some more, and she’s laughing, loud and hysterical.

He doesn’t understand what’s happening, but he knows enough not to join in.

“Wow,” she says after a minute, shaking her head. She looks right past him, her gaze unfocussed. “You’re still in love with your ex-husband.”

“What?” Where the fuck did that come from. “You heard what I said, right?”

“Did _you_ hear what you said? Did you actually hear what just came out of your mouth? I have never heard such nonsense in my life. It’s like… it’s like the worst thought out plot of the shitiest movie ever. I’m just waiting on Ben Afflick or Hugh Grant to make an appearance.” 

Patrick is utterly bewildered. “Why would I be trying to find Jonny a new boyfriend if I was still in love with him?” 

“Yeah,” Lana says, nodding. “Let’s start there, let’s start with Darrin Ellis, the crazy loon that’s friends with my cousin’s husband. How did you even find him?”

“Facebook.”

“So, you would’ve seen all the weird and wacky re-posts about flat-earthers, and immunizations, and climate change. And conspiracy theories, those are his favorites. I actually blocked him after he put up a ‘proof’ post about the illuminati covering up the existence of Planet X.”

“I didn’t read his page,” Patrick says, shrugging. “Just his profile.”

“Oh, please, you couldn’t possibly have missed every piece of trash he has up there. Unless, of course, you didn’t want to see it.”

Patrick feels an uncomfortable sensation crawl up his spine. He wants to shake it off, stretch out his bones. So, maybe there was stuff that he skimmed over -- but everything on Facebook is pretty crazy.

“And then Luke, the wanna be firefighter? Luke who puts his entire life on hold, just in case he gets a call from the local station? Luke who has let you down time and time again so he can volunteer to wash fire trucks or go out to pick up sandwiches for the crew? You thought he’d be a good choice?”

“Hey, come on,” Patrick protests. “Luke is a good guy --”

“Luke is a great guy. But he’ll never want anyone or anything as much as he wants to put out fires. And given just how many times he’s bailed on you at work, I don’t see how you wouldn’t think he’d bail on a date, too. I wonder, if you weren’t counting on it.”

Patrick tries to speak, but he can’t make anything coherent come out of his mouth. 

“I don’t even know where to start with the latest guy. And none of it makes sense, because between us, we could easily come up with at least five decent guys that you could have set your ex up with.” Lana holds up a hand, counting with her fingers as she lists off a ream of names. “Jamie who lives in the apartment below you, the one that gives free haircuts to homeless people. And Steve, the really sweet guy from your local bodega. Or my cousin, Dylan who’s been trying to meet someone since he came out. Or Mark from my pilates class. Or Anthony, the really hot radiologist from work. And those are just off the top of my head. But no, you went with the conspiracy theorist guy, the obsessive guy, and the man-child gym guy.” She shrugs her shoulders aggressively. “And then what, throw in a few more disasters, and you’re what’s left, right? That’s the end game here, that Jonny chooses you?”

“No,” Patrick says. “You’re wrong, and you’re giving me way too much credit here. I didn’t have any big plan to --”

“You had a choice, though. You had a choice. You could talk to Jonny and explain the situation in a rational way, resolve things like a grown-up, and then get on with your life. _Or_. Or you could come up with a ridiculous, almost desperate scheme just to keep him in your life.”

“That’s not…” Patrick shakes his head. “You’re oversimplifying, okay? There’s stuff you don’t --”

“I’m jealous,” she says, her voice hitching, breaking. “I’m actually sick with it. That you would do all of this for him, that you would commit to all this crazy just for him. I can’t get you to commit to a visit from my parents.”

It guts him to hear that, to have no defense, to know that anything he says will be hollow because she might be wrong about the Jonny stuff, but she’s right about the her stuff. He was a shitty boyfriend long before he went looking for Jonny.

“You took him out for those wings,” she says, softly now. “And I keep thinking how that’s such a perfect metaphor for our whole relationship. Someone else got the earlier you, the fresh you, the fun you, and all I ever got was the leftovers. I was always an afterthought.”

She’s finished with him, and he’s not going to fight her or fight for her. And when he says her name, he’s not really sure what he’s going to follow up with. But she saves him the trouble.

“No, don’t. If you want to keep lying to yourself, then go ahead. But I’m done being lied to. I want you to leave.”

 

**Before**

 

Their first morning of married life was a bit headachy, and Patrick learned that his new husband was a bit whiny when hungover. 

“I can’t believe I did that,” Jonny grumbled, holding his head in his hands, and kicking the comforter off the hotel bed.

“What?” Patrick asked, wondering if he means he can’t believe he married Patrick. 

“Spend four hundred bucks on alcohol.”

“Oh.” Patrick almost fell back asleep, but then he heard what Jonny just said. “Wait, you paid for that champagne?”

“Of course. I don’t fucking steal, Patrick.” 

Patrick winced his eyes open and forced himself to sit up in the bed. “Okay, firstly, where did you get four hundred dollars, and secondly, who the fuck did you get the booze from?’

Jonny’s shrug was defensive. “Malcolm has a cellar full of it that he’s dying to get rid of, so much that things like ID don’t really matter to him.”

“Malcolm has a cellar full of that garbage because he made a bad buying choice. And the markup on that shit, jesus, it costs less than thirty bucks a bottle wholesale. You paid house prices for it?”

Patrick stopped there because he was too hungover to shout, and Jonny was too hungover to be shouted at. So he stayed quiet as Jonny used his foot to drag his pants to the bed and then rummaged through the pockets. 

“Two hundred and eighteen dollars,” Jonny said, dropping the bills onto the locker. “Last night there was a thousand.”

“A thousand,” Patrick repeated dumbly.

“Guy was crapping out at the roulette wheel yesterday. He asked me for a number, and I gave him nineteen, red. Big win, and he gave me a thousand dollar tip.” Jonny looked like he was going to throw up. “I never spend money like that. We’re poor.”

Patrick moved tentatively closer. “It’s not that bad. We’ll be okay. I could always do a few odd jobs around the place, pick up some cash -”

“No. I mean _we_ , as in my family.”

“Oh.” Oh. “You never said.”

“I’m saying now,” Jonny said, impatient. “When I was about ten, my dad’s partner sold their business from under his feet, and then fucked off to the Caymans with the profits. That was bad enough, but there were also a couple of guys that Dad had persuaded to invest - good guys with families, and well, Dad always said that he’d rather be poor himself than be responsible for someone else’s poverty. So they got what was freed up from selling the house and holiday home and the cars, and I know Dad’s still paying off the loans he took out to make things right again.”

“I’m sorry,” Patrick said, and was cut off from saying more with a scoffing noise from Jonny.

“You need to understand that when I say poor, I mean _poor_ \-- if it couldn’t be bought at the thrift store, we didn’t have it, and that’s food, clothes, toiletries, shoes. There was no cable TV, no dishwasher, no drier, no money to hang out at the mall or McDonalds with friends. The only ‘charity’ Mom would accept was an expensive Christmas and birthday present for me and Davy from her parents every year. Expensive being relative, and usually around a hundred dollars. Hockey had to go -- and I was good, Patrick. But we couldn't afford it. Even with help, it was way more money than we had.” 

“You still play though?”

Jonny nodded. “I was heading for tier one peewee, but dumbed down my game to play house league so my parents wouldn’t feel too bad. Told them I liked soccer better, anyway.”

Patrick didn’t know how to respond to that, and Jonny wasn’t giving him much of a clue. “It doesn’t matter to me,” he said hesitantly. “If that’s what you’re worried about.”

“It isn’t. I’m just saying it because I feel bad for blowing all that cash last night. A thousand bucks would go a long way back home.” 

“Why didn’t you send it home then?”

Jonny’s shrug was mutinuous. “What that fucker said to you about not being able to afford a glass of water, that really pissed me off. Reminded me of crap from school, getting a hard time over brown bagged lunches and second-hand clothes. And fuck that, I wasn’t having him just say that shit to you. Fuck him.” 

Patrick had a headache, and a lot of words circling his head in bolded italics. _We, as in my family_. Weren’t they the We now, him and Jonny? Weren’t they the Family? _Back Home_. Where was home now? And fuck, where were they going to live? Was Patrick going to have to move to Toronto while Jonny went to college? Could he get work there? He usually could turn a buck pretty easily, money came to him easily. Should he offer to give some of it to Jonny’s family? Should he be supporting his in-laws? 

He looked down at his left hand which was clenching the sheet, at the ring on his finger that was dull and too big, but at that moment felt heavy and tight.

The phone rang, and the receptionist told him that check out was in twenty minutes. “Thank you,” he said, and relayed the message to Jonny, who groaned like he’d been punched. 

“Call them back and tell them we’ll pay for a late stay,” he said, flopping down on the bed and swearing when he speared himself with one of Patrick’s drink umbrellas. “I’m just going to pass out for the rest of the day.”

Patrick picked up the phone again -- in for a penny, in for a thousand dollars, apparently.

*

Things got better once they recovered from their hangovers and remembered that they liked each other.

Loved each other, even.

And the husbandly sex just got better. They found each other fascinating, could never get enough of touching and tasting, testing. There was never any shyness when it came to getting and giving what they wanted. It was easy to say yes, and just as easy to say ew. 

They made lists - Patrick’s favorite things to get were blow-job/fingering combos, and Jonny’s was rimming. 

They both decided that the quick, mostly clothes on fuck against Kevin’s Ford Fiesta was the hottest thing they ever did. But they agreed that would be a movable bar.

*

There was also this fun interlude where people asked them who was Kane and who was Toews, and they’d laugh and say they answered to both.

*

Patrick bought them a honeymoon that had to wait until they could bank four consecutive days off. It wasn’t much, a three night stay in a B&B in Baker, California, and a car hire to take them there. But it appealed to Patrick’s need to celebrate their husbandness, and Jonny’s sense of financial responsibility. 

Patrick packed their honeymoon case, and filled up the car with honeymoon gas, and even found two honeymoon t-shirts for them to wear on the journey to their honeymoon.

“Honeymoon snacks,” he said when they were on the road for about an hour. “We need honeymoon snacks.”

Jonny grumbled as he pulled over. “I could get sick of this honeymoon before it even starts.” But he was smiling which meant that he was totally lying, and all this honeymoon stuff was really doing it for him.

Patrick went into the store and picked up chips and cups of fresh mango. “Loser gets the fruit,” he said dumping it onto Jonny’s lap, and then taking a few seconds to kiss him. Honeymoon kisses, the sweetest kind. “And to show you what an awesome husband I am, I’ll take over the driving.”

They played two truths and a lie, Patrick with the Lays jammed between his thighs, and a pleased smirk on his face. He was definitely winning this round. “Give up?” he crowed, turning to look at Jonny and then almost crashing into a telegraph pole. 

“What the…” 

Jonny was waxy pale, his mouth open and pulling in shallow, greedy gulps of air. “Can’t catch my breath,” he panted, pulling at the loose collar of his t-shirt. 

Patrick tried to keep his own breathing calm as he pulled over and leaned in to unclip Jonny’s seatbelt. There was sweat dotted on his forehead, and his skin was clammy, deathly looking. He made a strangled sound that turned Patrick’s blood to ice, and then stumbled out of the car. Patrick got out and followed him to the shade of a tree. It can’t be that bad, he consoled himself, not if Jonny was still walking, maybe he was just dehydrated, maybe --

A fresh wave of panic almost swallowed him when Jonny hit the ground, his tongue big and gross, and his eyes swelling like he’d been punched, several times.

“Oh, fuck. Don’t die, don’t fucking die,” Patrick sobbed as he pulled out his phone to call 911. The dispatcher kept him on the line, saying terrifying things about obstructed airways and recovery position, and all he could do was cry harder and hold onto Jonny’s hand. Jonny didn’t do anything but squeeze back. He was shockingly quiet and still.

When the ambulance arrived, the paramedics swiftly loaded Jonny into the back, and Patrick crammed in beside him.

“Looks like an allergic reaction,” one of them said. Patrick didn’t have an answer to that. He didn’t have any answers to questions that the doctors fired at him while they tended to Jonny at the hospital. 

Was there a bee in the car? Any insects at all? Did Jonathan mention being stung? Did he have any allergies? Hay fever? Asthma? When was his last medical? Was he allergic to penicillin? Had he been treated for anything in the last year? Had there been a change to his general health? Has he ever had a reaction to an injection? Did he ever have heart or blood pressure problems? Had he ever had any immune system conditions? Did he ever have chemotherapy? Radiation? Hepatitis? Jaundice? Liver disease? Bleeding disorders? Epilepsy? Thyroid disease?...

The answer to every one of these was the same. “I don’t know.”

Nobody said it. Nobody said, “But isn’t he your husband? It says so right there on your t-shirt.” Probably because they all knew what Patrick was quickly learning. They weren’t married. Not really. They were just two kids playing at being grown-ups, and failing. 

The doctor handed Jonny’s phone to Patrick. “Do you think you could find somebody in there who does know?”

He found a number under _Maman_ , and a woman answered with a slew of scolding French. The only word that Patrick understood was ‘Jonathan’.

“Mrs. Toews?”

Her silence was terror filled, like she already knew that nobody would be calling her from her son’s phone with good news.

“My name is Patrick, and I’m… I’m, uh, a friend of Jonathan’s. We work at the casino together.” He upped the pace, talking quickly so as not to drag this out for her. “Jonathan got sick earlier, and we’re at the hospital. I’m going to put you onto a doctor now.” He gave the phone over without waiting for a reply and went back into the room where Jonny was.

He looked better, although maybe that was because there weren’t so many people in scrubs around him. His eyelids were less swollen, and Patrick couldn’t see if it was the same with his mouth as there was an oxygen mask pressed over it. A tube was feeding some fluid into the crease of his elbow. 

“Anaphylaxis,” another doctor said, closely examining every inch of Jonny’s almost naked body. “He had a reaction to something. But I don’t see any bites. Well, not any non-human ones.”

Patrick flushed, and looked away just as the phone doctor came back in, “A very quick hello to your mom, and I mean very quick.” He pulled down Jonny’s mask and held the phone close while Jonny rasped some soothing French down the line.

The doctor took the phone away after a few seconds and offered it to Patrick, smirking when Patrick almost shook his head right off his shoulders.

“Jonathan, I spoke with your mother, and she tells me that you’re in good health overall, but you had a reaction to strawberries when you were a child. Is that right?”

Jonny nodded. 

“Just hives, and not feeling great after eating them. One time you vomited?”

Another nod, followed by a firm head shake.

“But you didn’t touch or eat strawberries today?”

Jonny gave him a weak thumbs up. 

“I did,” Patrick said, and they both craned their heads to look at him. “When we stopped for snacks and fuel. They had one of these promotion things on in the deli for some fresh cream substitute. They had strawberries for dipping into it. The girl said I could try one. I had six.”

“And did you kiss Jonathan soon after?”

He had, as soon as he got back into the car.

“I guess I can stop looking for bites,” the other doctor said. “You solved the mystery, Patrick.”

Also, caused it.

The phone doctor talked to them both for a few minutes about how unusual a serious berry allergy was, and how this reaction may never happen again. But he also spoke about caution, and Jonny’s need to find a medical allergist, and also the probability of him having to carry around an EpiPen from now on. 

“Anyway,” the doctor said. “This is a lot of information, after a very trying experience. So I think we’ll wait until your parents get here, and then we’ll talk some more.”

Wait for the grown-ups, is what he meant.

“You should call your mom, too,” he said to Patrick.

 

**Now**

 

He feels bad, in a weirdly detached way. Uncomfortable, and guilty, but nothing more, nothing deeper. Lana’s things barely make a dent in the small box that Patrick uses as he gathers up. There’s a scarf, a crossword puzzle book, a few chewed pencils with Northwestern Memorial on the sides. But nothing personal, nothing to say that Lana was an important part of this space.

She’s right, Patrick knows. Maybe not about the sabotaged dates, or maybe she is, and Patrick is not quite ready for that level of introspection, not sure what that says about him. But she’s definitely right about the most important part - he wants to date Jonny. Just the thought of it makes his tummy jitter, his chest tighter.

He’d go back to the hospital and declare his intentions, but he doesn’t want to risk running into any of Lana’s supportive colleagues who may already know about their break-up. They’d probably keep him from Jonny, or they might do something even more vengeful. Lana told terrifying stories of pissed off nurses. 

He cements his decision to wait until the morning by stripping off and getting into bed. He takes a beer with him, flicks on the TV, and tires himself out by jerking off to old memories, ones where Jonny is naked, moaning, and arching his back like he always did before coming.

Patrick falls asleep with his hands still in his boxer briefs, his mess still sticky on his stomach.

*

It’s a little disappointing that Jonny isn’t home the following morning. Patrick has his lines ready - something short and cutesy - give me one more shot at this, I have the perfect guy for you, he recently came back on the market, I happen to know he’s just your type, he’d like to take you to breakfast, right now. 

It never occurs to him that Jonny might turn him down.

And he never in a million years would have anticipated that he’s too late.

The Mercedes Coupe pulls in against the kerb just after nine, drawing to a stop just before Patrick. He takes a careful step closer, assuming the driver behind the tinted windows is lost and looking for directions. 

He startles a little when the engine cuts off, and is even more startled when Jonny steps out of the car from the passenger side. The driver gets out, too, a handsome man in expensive shoes that click loudly as he struts to the sidewalk. 

“What are you doing here?” Jonny asks. The bandage is gone, and in its place is a smaller dressing. He looks good, he looks like someone who has been laughing recently, and not someone with a broken head.

“I came to see how you are,” Patrick says, turning his gaze to the stranger who’s adjusting the cuffs of his designer shirt. “And to take you to breakfast.”

“Ah,” the stranger says. “I’ve already beaten you to that. We just ate.”

“You did,” Patrick says flatly, his gut twisting when Jonny and this guy share a secretive smile. “I’m sorry, but how do you two…” He finishes that with a somewhat hostile wave of his hand.

“Funny story.”

And if that isn’t just perfect.

“This is Patrick,” Jonny says, and the guy laughs like this is great news.

“Oh, so you’re Lana’s boyfriend,” he says. “Eshan Nazir.”

Patrick takes the offered hand and shakes it, maybe a little too firmly. “How do you know Lana?”

“I only met her yesterday, same as Jonny. She was my nurse, too. I was being kept in overnight for observation, and before she left, Lana dropped by to say goodbye and tell me about the very hot guy in cubicle six who might like some company. I wasn’t going to, of course. Who hits on a sick man in hospital?”

Weirdos, that’s who. Weirdos and creeps and assholes.

“But then I woke up at two am, and couldn’t go back to sleep, and so I went for a little walk, and a little peek into cubicle six.”

Jonny takes over the story. “I was awake, and we got talking, and then got to breakfasting…”

“And then to dating. Or well, making a date anyway. I’ll pick you up at seven?”

Everything slows down then -- Jonny saying, yes, seven sounds great, Eshan getting back into his car, and driving away with a jaunty wave, Jonny taking his keys from his pocket, and turning away to go inside, leaving Patrick very much on the outside. 

“He doesn’t look ill,” Patrick blurts.

Jonny gives him a look that’s hard to read. “Diabetes. He wasn’t paying attention to his insulin schedule and passed out at work.”

Sounds irresponsible. “And what does he do at work?”

“Something in finance.”

Oh, man, the irony.

“Anyway, I’m going to go and fall into bed. Tell Lana I said hi.”

Sure, he’ll get right on that. “So, you like this guy then?” 

“I _really_ like this guy,” Jonny says, and Patrick hates the way he smiles when he says it. “I think it could be, you know, a thing.”

“Well, I hope it works out for you.”

He doesn’t hope for any such thing. He hopes that Eshan’s dick falls off from the herp before it goes anywhere near Jonny.

*

Jonny’s pretty much off the grid after that. Patrick texts him a couple of times, just to see how he is, if he wants to meet up for a bite to eat or a quick coffee. The answers are usually sent back quickly, but they all pretty much say the same thing - no, can’t, sorry.

**Still seeing the money man?** Patrick asks after a week or so, feeling oddly hopeful given that Jonny hasn’t mentioned him at all.

He’s left hanging for an hour before his phone screen lights up. **Date number three on Friday. That’s the one where you put out after, right? :)) Tell Lana I said hi, and thanks again for looking after me so well.**

Patrick makes a face at his phone -- if he could tell Lana anything, it certainly wouldn’t be thanks. Her meager belongings were collected while he was out, her key left in place of the box. There was no reason for them to talk ever again, and the depressing thing about that was that it wasn’t depressing him at all.

**We split up. She figured out that I still had a thing for you, and that was a dealbreaker.**

He stares at it until the words go blurry, and then quickly deletes. No point in throwing one bad idea after another.

A few days later he tries again. This time Jonny can’t meet up because he and Eshan are going to the theater. 

After that, they’re going to the movies, or ice-skating, or pumpkin picking. 

He works harder, something that has always been easy for him to do. Ten hour days shift into thirteen or fourteen hours. The ice-resurfacing business model is on hold, waiting for Patrick to gather the motivation to sort out the finances, which means a conversation with Jonny that he doesn’t want to have right now. He has other projects to keep him busy. Someone he knows in the trade has a buddy trying to refurbish her bar before the New Year. It’s a big job, new floor and ceiling, rewiring, windows, doors, heating upgrade, and Patrick’s agreed to project manage the whole rebuild. Soon he’s going to be working all the way through Saturday, too.

Fingers crossed.

Occasionally, when he is home and not yet ready to sleep, he binge watches anything involving murderous rampages. If there are heavily-accented spies and/or mobsters on either end of relentless carnage, Patrick is hooked.

Yippee ki-yay, motherfuckers.

*

It’s well into November, and he’s stopped at a red light, tapping out the beat for _Starships_ on the steering wheel. The couple crossing the road in front of him are laughing and shoving each other, not in too much of a hurry to get to the sidewalk. Patrick rolls his eyes when they stop to share a giggly kiss, and then gets the mean-spirited pleasure of beeping at them when the light turns green.

They’re both guys, he realises when they pull apart, waving and smiling in apology. Patrick has no idea who the dude in the navy parka and bleached blond hair is, but he knows the other man.

Eshan doesn’t recognise Patrick, though, beaming as he pulls his date off the road and celebrating that with more kisses. 

Patrick is so stunned that he sits there until he figures out that the horns he’s hearing are for him to move. He pulls off, and parks on the quiet street around the corner, heart racing loudly. His phone sits in his slightly trembling hand while he thinks about what to text Jonny.

**Sorry to hear that you and Eshan broke up. Me and Lana broke up, too. So, I guess we’re both single now.**

Maybe a little opportunistic.

**Sorry to hear that you and Eshan broke up. Me and Lana broke up, too. If you want to talk, I’m around.**

Jonny might want to know how Patrick knows they’ve broken up, and it might upset him to hear that Eshan has moved on so quickly and is kissing other men in the middle of the road.

**How are you? Me and Lana broke up.**

The how-are-you reads more like a segue into Patrick wanting to talk about his own relationship woes, when really what’s most important is how Jonny is. So that’s what he sends -

**Hey! Haven’t talked in a while. How’s things?**

He keeps the screen open and a minute later the bubble appears. Patrick’s already making plans to go comfort Jonny, mentally calculating the quickest route to get there. He’ll leave just as soon as --

**Hey! All good here. Busy packing -- Eshan is whisking me away for an overnight stay at the Peninsula.**

Patrick’s upended for the second time in the past ten minutes. He reads and rereads the message until he’s certain that there’s no other way to interpret it. 

Eshan is cheating on Jonny. Eshan is kissing other people while Jonny is at home packing for a romantic mini-break. 

“What a fucking… fuck,” Patrick whispers to himself, and then takes a steadying breath. What he needs to do now is figure out a way to break the news to Jonny.

“No,” Erica says when Patrick calls her for some help deciding.

“What do you mean, no. No, as in, you really think I should text him? You think it would be better coming from me in person -”

“No, as in don’t tell him anything at all.”

Patrick must have heard her wrong. “This guy is cheating on Jonny, and Jonny doesn’t know about it. I was clear about that, right?”

“I was listening. I also heard you say that you and Jonny met up a few times, and then he started dating someone, and he hasn’t spoken to you since.”

“So? You think I shouldn’t tell him his boyfriend is fucking around because he hasn’t called me in a while? Friends should tell each other this sort of shit.”

“I totally agree. And that’s my point -- you’re not friends. Did he even text you yesterday for your birthday? Does he even know when your birthday is?”

No, he didn’t, and yes, he does. 

“And for all you know, this could be an open relationship.”

Patrick tuts. “That doesn’t sound very like Jonny.”

“But you don’t know,” Erica says. “You’re speculating because you don’t know. Jonny doesn’t discuss his relationships with you because he doesn’t think they’re any of your business, and I really don’t think he’d appreciate you interfering. And…” She sighs deeply. “I can’t help but wonder whether your motives are fully altruistic here.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning maybe you’re hoping there’s something for you to gain here. Meaning I remember the heartbroken you that came back from Vegas. Meaning the relationship you are in right now is the only one you need to focus on. For Christ’s sake, Pat, bring that girl home to Buffalo for Christmas.”

*

He starts to work Sundays, with immediate effect. His body is exhausted, but his mind whirls with the weight of keeping a secret that isn’t his own. The only way he can get to sleep is to a background of John Wick murdering just about everybody. 

Sleep tight, bitch.

The bar goes well, if maybe a little slowly. Patrick is there every weekday from 4pm to almost midnight, every Saturday from 1pm, and all of Sunday. He oversees the building, electrics, heat installation, plumbing, carpentry, and plastering. He sets a schedule, gets pissed when it isn’t adhered to, and enjoys wiping the smirks from workmen who can’t believe that this kid is experienced enough to lead this project. The no-hard-hat-no-safety-boots-no-entry is strictly adhered to, and he sends the first guy who breaks that rule home without warning. And the second. There isn’t a third. 

Patrick rolls his sleeves up and gets stuck in, and the scepticism soon becomes grudging respect, and by completion, there are handshakes and a host of people who would be happy to work for him again.

The bar owner’s name is Gabby, and she’s plenty impressed with the finished product. She’s not so pleased with her interior designer, and has delayed the big opening to New Year’s Eve.

“You’ll be around?” she asks. “Just in case anything goes wrong with the lights or whatever. I’ll pay you in champagne and a booth in the VIP area.”

Patrick’s a little insulted - nothing is going to go wrong with the lights or whatever. But it’s the perfect excuse to escape Buffalo after the holidays.

*

Christmas at home is as it always is. Patrick spends too much money, eats too much food, naps too much, sits around too much, drinks too much, and does his best to induct his sisters into the wonders of fictional gratuitous violence. 

He also looks at his phone too much, but there’s never anything there from Jonny. Not even a Merry Christmas, or something equally generic. Something that might just say _hey, I thought of you today._

There isn’t, because Erica is right. He and Jonny aren’t friends. The last message from Jonny was the one saying he was going away with Eshan, and the exchanges before that were mostly Patrick fishing for information. He’d been so caught up in what Jonny might say that he never once thought about what Jonny wasn’t saying - how are you, how’s work, what are you up to, how bout them Mets. None of it is reciprocal conversation. It’s mostly Patrick being embarrassingly needy.

“Who isn’t calling you?” Donna says, appearing with mom-like ninjaness into the doorway of his room.

“Nobody,” Patrick answers, dropping his phone onto the bedside locker. “Everybody.”

“Lana?”

Patrick takes a breath. Might as well be done with it. “We broke up.”

“Thank goodness,” Donna says, moving to sit beside him on the twin bed. “I never met the girl, but I know enough to know you should have treated her better.”

“Yeah, well, she’s my ex-girlfriend now, and we don’t need to talk about it anymore.”

“Can we talk about your ex-husband?”

Patrick can feel his eyebrows rise. “Jonny?” 

“Do you have another ex-husband?”

“Do you ever get tired of making unfunny jokes about my one and only marriage?”

She bumps against him, part apology, part tease, and then twists to pull a sheet of folded paper from her back pocket. “I got a holiday card from Andrée. She mentioned that you and Jonny had met up.”

“You can’t get mad about this -”

“Did you talk about the alimony?”

“The alimony? Mom, jesus, I haven’t stopped paying --”

“You were never paying it. At least not to Jonathan.”

Patrick stares at her, and then down to the piece of paper she hands over. He scans the print and the figures, but it’s a good minute before his brain can catch up with his eyes. 

It’s a print-off of a bank statement, with rows and rows of dates and five hundred dollar deposits, and an eye-watering total of thirty-two thousand dollars.

“I don’t…” he says, and shrugs. 

His mom is chewing nervously at her lips, her hands clenched in her lap. “Are you mad?” 

“I’m confused.”

“It’s your money. We never touched a dime. You can have it whenever.”

“It’s Jonny’s money.”

“We thought so, too, and we tried very hard to give it to him. But every time we posted a cheque, it came right back. The last time, there was a note asking us to stop making things worse.” Donna looks over at the page in Patrick’s hand, her face creased with guilt. “So, we did.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“In the beginning, for the same reason I made you pay it in the first place. I was so mad at you. So, so mad, and not just because you got married, but because you brought this chaos into these people’s lives, and instead of being sorry, you were digging your heels in and refusing the annulment. And yes, I wanted to punish you, and I wanted you to know that these things have consequences, and I wanted you to make amends, to be responsible, accountable.”

Patrick’s almost surprised to feel that most of that is actually fair. “It was five years ago, Mom, though. You can’t still be pissed.”

"I'm not. After I stopped being mad, I started to feel guilty, not about the money really, but about you, and how you were feeling about… everything, and Jonathan. You wouldn’t talk to us, which I guess we deserved. But I’m your mom, Pat, and I need to know when you’re okay.” She swallows tightly, blinking her watery eyes. “I knew that when you’d come to me and say that you weren’t paying the money anymore, that would be when you were over him, and then I’d know you were okay." Her hand drops to his thigh, squeezes. "I’m still waiting.”

Patrick swallows. He’s not sure what to say to that, but if his mom starts to really cry, he’s not going to be long behind her. “Okay.”

“That’s it? You’re not going freak out over this?”

“No.” He really isn’t. 

It was never about the money.

Lana wasn’t wrong about a damn thing. 

 

**Before**

 

_Annulment is a legal procedure within religious and secular legal systems for declaring a marriage null and void. Unlike divorce, it is usually retroactive, meaning than an annulled marriage is considered to be invalid from the beginning, as if it had never taken place._

“No.”

His mom’s eyebrow arched dangerously. “What do you mean, no? You are in no position to be saying no.”

“I wasn’t drunk.”

“I don’t care,” she yelled. “I really don’t care, Patrick. Nobody is doing a sobriety test. You are going to sign a document that says you couldn’t consent to the marriage on the grounds that you were intoxicated, and would not have married otherwise. And fine, if you don’t like that reason, the lawyer -- the very expensive lawyer that we are paying for -- has come up with a few other suggestions. Drug use, extreme stress, fraud, being unfaithful before and after the marriage.”

Patrick refused to pick his poison. “No.”

His mom stormed out, pleading with her husband to knock some sense into their son.

“You’re not being fair,” Tiki said. “I know that this is hard for you, but it’s hard for her, too. You know that we took Jonny’s parents out for dinner last night? Things are bad there, son. I mean, we didn’t go to the Ritz. It was just a regular restaurant, and Jonny’s folks went pale when they saw the prices. Even though we insisted on paying, they ordered the cheapest thing on the menu, and water to drink. It’s not a huge stretch to conclude that having to pay for last minute flights and accommodation would have been a bit of a strain. And your mom is really upset about that. She feels responsible.”

“She isn’t,” Patrick said. “I am, and Jonny is. But she isn’t.”

“So, take a little of that responsibility. Think about Jonny’s parents. They went home thinking we were going to sort out the annulment. They can’t afford to come back to do it themselves, or hire a lawyer. You have them over a barrel, Patrick.”

“They won’t need a lawyer.”

His dad sighed. “You think you have it all figured out, but all you’re doing is making things worse when you could be making it easier for everyone, for Jonny, for his folks, for your mom, for you.” 

See, Patrick couldn’t help but feel like he had been making things easier for everyone. Since Andrée got here, seven hours after they arrived at the hospital, he and Jonny hadn’t been alone. And Patrick hadn’t complained about that. He’d said nothing when he was shouted at in front of Jonny. He’d said nothing when he was shouted at away from Jonny. He said goodbye to Jonny when he was told to. He’d apologized to Jonny’s parents before they left.

He and Jonny were over, but that didn’t mean it never happened.

It was done, but it had been important. Patrick wasn’t going to let them erase that, reduce the whole relationship to a drunken error.

They called his bluff, sat him before the expensive lawyer, and he was asked to confirm his inability to consent to a legal marriage due to intoxication.

“I was sober, and I consented. I was not under the influence of alcohol or drugs. Nor was I unduly stressed, or mentally ill. I did not marry for fraudulent reasons.”

The lawyer stared at him, and then at Donna.

Patrick didn’t dare look at her face. It was enough to see her blanched-white knuckles.

*

Divorce it was. They had to stay in Nevada for another week while it was sorted out, although Patrick didn’t do anything but stay out of his mother’s way.

On the last night, she ordered him to pack his bags, and then she went through the terms and conditions.

You will not make contact with Jonathan for the foreseeable future. You will return to Buffalo and take up employment with Kane Construction. You will pay Jonathan the alimony sum of five hundred dollars per month, to be lodged into his account by the fifth of every calendar month.

He signed the page and handed it to his mother.

“Congratulations,” she said coldly. “You are now a divorcé.”

It was still better than being a ghost.

 

**Now**

**Today**

**New Year’s Eve**

 

The bar launch goes off without a hitch. Patrick hangs around to make sure, watches as the place fills with beautiful business types, posing, and pouting at their phones. They look good, they coo about the design, and they make Gabby happy by buying expensive cocktails. By eight thirty, the place is hopping and Patrick is ready to leave.

“Got a better offer than here?” Gabby asks while he zips up his jacket.

As it happens, yes -- he has both Kill Bill movies waiting for him at home.

“Well,” she says, handing over two magnums of vintage champagne. “If you won’t stay for a drink to see in the new year, at least take one home with you.”

He’s saying thanks when he catches sight of him. Eshan, just a few feet away, with another, newer, attractive companion. This one has dark hair and pale skin, and Eshan’s arm clamped territorially around his waist. Patrick has to look away when they lean in at the same time for a kiss.

“You okay?” Gabby asks, glancing between Patrick and Eshan. “You know that guy?”

Patrick _hates_ that guy. “No,” he says. “Goodnight.”

It’s none of his business, he reminds himself as he makes his way to the exit. Jonny’s made that perfectly clear. Patrick’s going to just keep walking, get to his car, drive home to his movies, and forget he’s ever seen anything.

He gets as far as opening the car and dumping the magnums in the passenger seat, and then he’s turning on his heel, marching back to the bar, skipping past the bouncers, and into the throng once more.

Because fuck this, and fuck that asshole. Jonny deserves better, stuck at home or work on the last night of the year while his boyfriend wines and dines his latest conquest.

“Remember me,” he shouts when he reaches Eshan. He’s hoping Eshan does, he’s really hoping to see a look of fear or guilt flashing over that handsome face.

But Eshan just blinks at him and shakes his head slowly. “Have we met --”

“Oh, fuck you,” Patrick says, clean out of patience. He reaches for a glass of beer and throws it over Eshan’s expensive shirt, both soaking and shocking him. 

“Are you insane?” Eshan screeches. 

It’s gratifying, watching him lose his composure, splutter and flush, while his young companion stands by uselessly. Even more gratifying when Patrick spots the wet patch darkening the crotch of Eshan’s pale gray pants. That was a good shot.

“Fuck you,” Patrick says again. “Jonny’s worth a hundred of you.”

He leaves then, before Eshan thinks of retaliating, or the bouncers catch up to what’s happening. He doesn’t remember much of the walk back to the car, or even the drive home, other than shaking fingers he locks around the steering wheel. 

The adrenaline rush crashes out of him as soon as he’s parked outside his own building. He feels weak, sick, like he needs to lie down and roll around in some serious regret for a while.

But before he does, he sends off some quickfire texts to Jonny.

**I’m sorry.**

**But he deserved it. You deserve better.**

**He shouldn’t treat you like this, Jonny.**

**He really is a fucking dickhead.**

When the last is sent, he turns his phone on silent, and puts it in his pocket. He’ll deal with the fallout in the morning.

 

*

His doorbell rings just as BB is ducking away from Gogo Yubari’s meteor hammer. 

Patrick knows it’s Jonny, even though Jonny has never been to his place, and has no idea where it is. But still, it has to somehow be Jonny.

“What did you do,” Jonny says when Patrick pulls the door open. He looks a little pissed, and maybe a little worried. He also looks unfairly good in dark wash jeans and a puffer jacket in the same shade of navy. His hair sticks up when he takes his beanie off, but he makes it work.

“How did you get here?” Patrick asks, stepping by to let him in.

“Your mom.” Jonny stalks through to the living area, walking the perimeter, taking in everything, from the cards on the mantle to the prints on the wall. “What? You can call my mom to find out where I live, but I can’t call yours?”

Patrick rolls his eyes. “If I get you a beer, will you throw it over me in an act of boyfriendly revenge?”

“I might throw it over you if you don’t start making sense,” Jonny says, unzipping his jacket.

Patrick grabs two bottles from the fridge, and when he comes back Jonny is sitting on the sofa, looking quite at home. “What did you do?” he asks again, taking the offered drink. “You send me all these texts and then ignore my calls?”

“Not strictly ignoring them,” Patrick says, heading for the armchair. “More like not hearing them.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I take it you haven’t spoken to Eshan tonight?”

“No?”

Patrick takes a long slug of his beer, followed by a very deep breath. “Look, I know this is not my business, but he’s cheating on you. And not for the first time. He was at this new bar downtown earlier, with another guy.” 

Jonny’s face goes utterly blank. 

“I’m sorry.”

There’s a weird silence for a bit, then Jonny says, “What did you do, Patrick?” His tone is one of pure terror, each word sounding like its own sentence. What. Did. You. Do. Patrick.

“I fucked a beer all over him, made it look like he pissed himself.” He shrugs, sorry-not-sorry. “I shouldn’t have done it, I know. But what he was doing to you was worse.”

“Worse,” Jonny repeats dumbly, and then seems to shake himself. “Oh my god, I can’t believe you did that.”

“Yeah, well. He was cheating on you.” 

“He really wasn’t.”

“I was there,” Patrick says, voice low, tone gentle. “I’m sorry, Jonny, but I saw him, with another guy, touching and kissing another guy.”

“I’m sure you did, but he wasn’t cheating on me because you can’t cheat on someone you’re not dating.”

Patrick stares at him, stunned, until Jonny looks down at his bottle. 

“We were never together,” Jonny says eventually, quieter now. “We went out one time, that night I got back from the hospital, and then I never saw him again. I never wanted to see him again.”

Patrick’s eyes flit to the TV where it’s frozen on an image of Gogo, holding her hand to her mouth while she giggles. “You ever see this movie?”

Jonny doesn't answer for a bit. “Yeah, a few times. Prefer the second one. That scene with the snake in the caravan is my favorite.”

“There are two scenes with the snake in the caravan,” Patrick says. “One where Budd gets killed, and one where Elle gets killed.”

“Right. Patrick --”

“After this scene here.” Patrick nods at the TV. “Oren says that she hopes BB has some energy left, otherwise she won’t last five minutes. And then they start fighting, and the fight lasts four minutes and fifty-nine seconds exactly, and then BB slices Oren's scalp off.”

“Patrick --”

“You could have just said, man, you know,” Patrick snaps. “You could have just said that you didn’t want to hang out. You didn’t have to make up an imaginary boyfriend to get rid of me. An imaginary boyfriend that I just threw…” Fuck, he can’t even finish that, but he does get a clear mental visual of a shocked, _innocent_ Eshan with a soaking groin. Fuck.

“Can I say something now?” Jonny asks.

Patrick takes a sup of his beer, and makes a face. “Go nuts.”

“Thanks,” Jonny says dryly. He puts down his bottle, and seems to compose himself, back straight, hands on thighs. “You had a girlfriend, Patrick. And I wasn’t really very… mindful of that, I guess. I thought maybe things weren’t great between you, because why else would you be at my place all the time, fixing stuff, and setting me up on terrible dates? I was pretty sure you were doing it on purpose, like you couldn’t be getting it this wrong on accident. I thought maybe… I’m not sure what I thought exactly. I just, I thought about you. All the time. I just wanted to be with you. I wasn’t thinking about your girlfriend as a real person.” He stops and shakes his head. “But then I met her, and she was lovely, and so kind to me, and here I was, having feelings for her boyfriend that I had no business having. Then you arrived at the hospital, and I could see that there was tension between you, and that it was something to do with me. So I did what I thought was the right thing for us all, and that was not to see you anymore. Eshan was just… a cover.” 

“Lana and I broke up,” is what Patrick says to all of that.

Jonny’s lips quirk. “I know. You hardly think I was going to make that confession if you were still with her.”

“But how...oh, my mom.”

“Your mom.”

Patrick smiles down at the bottle warming in his hand. “You know that Lana introduced you to Eshan, knowing how I was probably still into you, knowing that she was probably going to dump me. She kinda fucked us both over.”

“Yeah,” Jonny agrees. “But we kind of deserved it.”

“Yeah, I guess.” Patrick settles back in chair, very much liking the unexpected turn this evening has taken, a little flutter settling low in his belly when he thinks where else it might go. “So, you weren’t wrong, about what I was doing with those dates. I like to think I didn’t know I was doing it, but… there’s a guy downstairs that would be perfect for you. He’s hot, and he gives haircuts to homeless people, and as far as I know he’s single.”

“Where’s my coat?” Jonny makes to stand and Patrick rolls his eyes at him.

“Fuck off.”

Jonny laughs. “There’s someone else I know who’s perfect for me. And as far as I know, he’s single.”

“It’s me, isn’t it,” Patrick stage-whispers, and they’re grinning stupidly at each other. 

“Same,” Patrick says. “What you said, about thinking about you, and stuff. Me, too.”

“Thinking about you and stuff,” Jonny mocks. “Be still my beating heart.”

He’s gorgeous, and Patrick’s had enough of being this far away from him. When he gets up, Jonny settles back like he’s making room for him, and Patrick is there, straddling his lap, wrapping his hands around Jonny’s head, holding it against the crook of his neck.

It’s right, the feel of him, the feel of them, and it makes Patrick say, “I kept waiting to stop feeling the way I did about you. I kept waiting to feel that way about someone else. It never happened.”

Jonny pushes back to look at him, eyes dark and warm. Patrick _loves_ him.

"It was always you, Patrick. It will always be you." 

*

By the time they make it to Patrick’s bedroom, both of them have swollen lips, wild hair, and bite marks on their now bare chests. They wrestle out of their clothes, making work of it, given that being apart for even pants-removal time is too much to bear. But they giggle about it into each other’s mouths, get a bit of a synchronised shimmy going on, and eventually all remaining clothing is pooling at their feet.

It would be nice, Patrick thinks as he falls onto the bed, to take their time, go slow, learn each other again.

“Later,” Jonny promises, pressing Patrick into the mattress, and it’s just skin on skin that shorts Patrick’s brain out. They’re connected, touching everywhere, cocks sliding together in ways that are too much, and not enough.

“Legs around me,” Jonny gasps, and Patrick does as he’s told.

And yeah, that’s the leverage he needs. Jonny kisses him, and covers him, and they get a rhythm going that soon has Patrick warning -- “Gonna come, Jonny.”

Jonny answers by snapping his hips even faster, and shaking as he shoots all over Patrick’s stomach and chest.

Patrick is seconds behind him, with the kind of orgasm that’s going to have the neighbors throwing shoes at the dividing walls.

“My ears,” Jonny complains, letting all his boneless weight crash down on Patrick. It’s sticky, a bit gross, and Patrick tolerates it for the few minutes they need to get their breaths back.

“Squashy,” he moans, pushing at Jonny until they’re both on their side, legs tangled, foreheads almost touching.

“Hi,” Jonny says.

“Hi.”

They lean in to kiss again, lazy and slow, and so into each other that the sudden crack of fireworks jolts them both.

“Midnight?” Jonny asks. 

“Don’t think so.” Patrick fumbles for the remote to switch the TV on. It’s only 11:28, and that reminds him. “Wait there,” he tells Jonny, and makes his way to the kitchen where he grabs one of the champagne magnums from the fridge, and two glasses from the cupboard.

“Are you going to get me drunk and ask me to marry you again?” Jonny says, eyeing Patrick’s hands when he comes back.

“I might,” Patrick answers. “But don’t worry, even if the county clerks’ offices were open, we’d still have to wait twenty-four hours before the ceremony. We should have sobered up by then.” He knees his way up the bed, and puts the glasses on the locker nearest Jonny.

“I think these are for margaritas.”

Patrick kisses him, because -- “They’re glasses, Jonny. They’re for drinks. At midnight.”

“No umbrellas,” Jonny says. 

“No curls.”

Jonny grins. “You mean, no hair.”

That’s fighting talk, right there, and they roll around, pushing and tickling, and mostly laughing, until Jonny settles both of them on their sides, facing each other, fingers linked together. Patrick looks down at their hands resting on his Jonny’s hip, remembering the cheap rings they used to wear, and the promise behind them. Jonny’s hands are bigger now, he thinks, wider, maybe. They flash between white and blue from the lights on the muted TV.

“I called you,” Jonny whispers after a while. “I called your phone, even though I knew you didn’t have it anymore.”

Patrick had left it under the tree after he called for the ambulance. When his parents had taken him back to collect the rental car, the phone was gone.

“Sorry I couldn’t answer,” Patrick whispers back. “Was it terrible for you when they took you home?”

Jonny’s mouth turns down at the corners. “Yeah, my parents were so stressed, and I really let them down. I think the worst thing was that my mom couldn’t even look at me. Even _I_ couldn’t look at me. I was so embarrassed, so guilty. Like, life was shitty enough for them, and I had always been one of the things they could rely on, that they could be proud of, that would never hurt them. And if it all wasn’t bad enough, your mom was trying to give me money for a while. Did you know that?”

“Yeah, sorry.” 

Oh boy. Has Patrick got a story for him. Tomorrow.

“I didn’t even think about you for the first few months. Thinking about you meant thinking about everything we’d done, and all the shit we caused.” Jonny’s voice is so low that Patrick has to stay perfectly still to hear him. “And then one day, I just got this weird… I don’t know, I just… I _missed_ you.” He squeezes their hands together. “I missed you so much.”

Patrick squeezes back. 

“So, I called you, just to see if I could even get your voicemail, so I could hear your voice, or maybe leave you a message, or something.”

“What would you have said?”

Jonny’s chest expands as he takes a shuddering breath. “Thanks.”

“Thanks?”

“For insisting on the divorce, for not taking the annulment.”

“I made that decision without you, and I often wondered how you felt about that.”

“Grateful,” Jonny says, with a small smile. “It was important. What we had, what we did.”

“Yeah, I thought so.”

The fireworks are starting up again, and Patrick guesses it must be nearly midnight. They should sit up and pop the champagne, they have a lot to celebrate. But first, he leans in for a kiss.

“Happy New Year,” Jonny says, the words vibrating on Patrick’s lips.

“Yeah, you too.”

Happy New Everything. 

 


End file.
